{"id":77969,"date":"2026-05-14T09:36:57","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T01:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=77969"},"modified":"2026-05-14T09:36:57","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T01:36:57","slug":"the-neutronium-alchemist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=77969","title":{"rendered":"The Neutronium Alchemist"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As promised, I’m on the second book of Peter F. Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn<\/em> trilogy and with the entire Confederation now aware of the crisis, it’s action-packed right from the start. I’d complained earlier that my main issue with the first book was the character of Joshua Calvert being set up as the stereotypical action hero. He does get a little less of the limelight but unfortunately we also get another copy of him? While still very entertaining, I like this somewhat less than the first book, partly because the Confederation is rather smart about containing the possessed, so they don’t turn out to be as large-scale a threat as they initially seemed. Plus, I strongly dislike the new possessed leader characters such as Al Capone. I mean, really?<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

After being briefed about the capabilities of the possessed, the Confederation Navy imposes a quarantine on all inhabited worlds to limit their spread. The Edenists move to a war footing and institute measures to instantly detect possession. The pastoral planet of Norfolk is completely taken over and moved out of the universe but not before Louise Kavanagh and her sister escape with the assistance of one of the possessed Fletcher Christian. Quinn Dexter attempts to get to Earth but is rebuffed by the heightened defenses. The highly industrialized world of New California falls to the possessed when Al Capone appears there and takes command. Under his organization, the skilled non-possessed are selected to remain free in order to operate advanced technology and he assembles a fleet powerful enough to threaten the Confederation Navy. In the Kulu Kingdom, the planet of Ombrey is forced to concede a peninsula to the possessed but works on a plan to liberate it by employing an army of bitek constructs sourced from Tranquility. Finally Alkad Mzu is on the run and everyone wants her Alchemist weapon. Joshua Calvert once again sets out from Tranquility on behalf of Ione Saldana to pursue her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The action picks up immediately after the previous book and as with before, there’s no let-up in the level of detail. Do you really care about exactly how Louise and Geneviere escape from Norfolk given that it’s a planet with no strategic value? Probably not, but you’ll get the full story anyway. Louise at least gets some agency of her own here even if she needs to be rescued again and again by others and we get to see her starting to realize how privileged a position she was born to. There’s also a lot in here about Al Capone forming the largest, most organized faction of the possessed, with the assistance of Jezebelle, the insterstellar superstar of the era. This is reasonably realistic given the disadvantages that the possessed have with using any kind of modern technology and the fact that they still need ships to travel to other worlds. But it’s also unnecessarily Anglo-American centric. Of all the historical figures to choose from, are Capone and Fletcher really the most interesting ones to pick? I’m not a big fan of the Valisk subplot either. It’s silly that teenagers are dumb enough to be attracted to Kiera’s call in numbers large enough to matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I continued to enjoy reading the Confederation and the Edenists being competent in their responses. Programming AIs to detect patterns of technological glitches to search for the possessed as well as an electronic device to determine if someone is possessed in person are simple counters that they implement quickly. To keep up, the possessed further improve their own so-called energistic powers and learn that they can use simple interfaces to access advanced technology. I’m leery though that leaders like Capone have enough leverage against the possessed to get them to do whatever he wants, including gathering information from the masses of the dead. I note that Hamilton introduces more supernatural elements in this book, no doubt in preparation for the next one. I’m not a big fan of that even if it’s obvious that the ultimate solution to the crisis cannot be technological and must instead be metaphysical as the alien Kiint attest. Still, I’m disappointed that the priest Horst Elwes plays no role at all in this installment of the series. One would have thought that the explicitly Christian Kulu Kingdom would have leapt onto his successful use of faith to defend himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s nice that Calvert comes across as a bit more mortal here and we get alternative heroes to root for. It’s bad that the women are still portrayed as being weaker such that even the agent of the Kulu External Security Agency Monica Foulkes is at risk of joining his harem. The pattern that the strong, competent women characters are all villainous is disturbing and I think of Alkad Mzu as definitely being among them here. The worldbuilding has slowed down here as the book focuses on getting things done, so much so that the snippets of just each character doing something plot-relevant are getting shorter and shorter. It’s annoying and exacerbates the already present problem of jumping quickly from one perspective to another such that the reading experience doesn’t flow smoothly at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m still entertained enough to want to continue the series and at this point I really want to know how it ends. Hamilton’s smartest twist here is that the Confederation at this point is certainly able to deal with the possessed as a purely military threat. The issue is that destroying the possessed means killing their living hosts as well and in the long run, everyone eventually dies and thus becomes an enemy. Unfortunately there is no character in the book who is able to think and discuss about these issues in a philosophically interesting way. The scene we get of Syrinx meeting with one of the Kiint\u00a0to address this is woefully short and unsatisfying. So this remains a decent space opera though with a bit more care, it could have been satisfying as science-fiction as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As promised, I’m on the second book of Peter F. Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn trilogy and with the entire Confederation now aware of the crisis, it’s action-packed right from the start. I’d complained earlier that my main issue with the first book was the character of Joshua Calvert being set up as the stereotypical action hero. … Continue reading The Neutronium Alchemist<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77969"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78169,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77969\/revisions\/78169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}