Pandora’s Star is a science fiction book by Peter F. Hamilton, published in 2004. I began this one because I absolutely loved his recent book, Exodus: Archimedes Engine, which is set in the world of an upcoming video game. I gave that one an easy 5 stars – it had such interesting concepts, setting and a good pace.

I felt that Pandora’s Star (PS) was good, but not as good as Exodus. PS felt bigger and wider than Exodus, but I felt that the writing at times was just a little unrefined. This is the most male gaze story I’ve read in a long time (potentially ever), where every female character was overly sexualised, young and most of the times using the attractiveness for manipulative purposes. While this was most likely just Hamilton’s style of writing back then, it could also have been interpreted as the state of humanity in a world where death has basically been overcome through ‘rejuvenation’ of the body, making everyone horny, sexy 18–25 year olds. At least that’s one way you could justify it… But all the interactions between a male and female character ultimately revolved around sex and attraction, which got a little old, but (even though I’m ranting about it here) didn’t really ruin the reading experience for me. Most of the time it just led to an eye-roll and laughter.

The concepts were pretty bloody cool though. I’m relatively new to sci-fi; I’d say I’ve read 10 sci-fi books over the years, loving some like Hyperion and Children of Time, but also not loving a few. But I could tell while reading PS that the main antagonist, MorningLightMountain, was a very special kind of alien. I loved the chapters from its perspectives, while also being terrified of it. I think the thing that made it so special to me was its non-humanness; not really angry and wanting to just go out and wipe out the human race, but doing so from a place of not having the concepts of compassion or pain. It simply needs to expand, to take the resources, to become omnipresent and immortal – whatever is required to do so. What I loved was how this was scary when contrasted to how humans think – to human nature.

I loved how an important conversation takes place with MorningLightMountain that aims to understand its goals, but it’s not carried out by a human; it’s between the alien and an AI. I thought this was interesting, seeing two different non-human consciousnesses discussing the fate of humanity, and seeing the AI as more human than the alien.

Something I really enjoyed about the book was its look at not only new technologies, but their effects on humanity. Specifically, the book centres around the presence of wormhole technologies. There are places that in real space are separated by huge distances, but due to wormholes, they’re effectively neighbours (linked by a vast network of trains!) This is something I’ve been interested in quite a bit recently – how certain technologies drastically shape humanity, and what human life looks like in societies where those technologies dominate.

I did have a hard time with the lack of a clear lead character. There are a lot of characters in this book, and it didn’t feel like one was the main one the reader should be rooting for. For me, I did find myself gravitating towards the Paula Myo character, and also the storyline of Ozzy Isaacs. But it was definitely more of a large ensemble of players, rather than a clear through-line character.

Overall, really enjoyed it. It was a little wordy – it probably could have been cut down to 800-900 pages – but it was also really immersive. Keen for the second one, but won’t jump in straight away.

4/5