Peter F. Hamilton has something of a reputation in these parts. I’ve been delighted by his books just as often as I have been utterly repelled by them, in particular I find his treatment of women to be hugely problematic. Yet, I keep going back to his books, because, when he is good, he is very very good.

The first novel in the Chronicle of the Fallers - itself the third sequence of books in the Commonwealth Universe - really didn’t work for me. There was a great story there about political repression and the organising of a resistance, but this tale was spoiled by the presence of Hamilton’s id made manifest - Nigel Sheldon. This is a character I simply despise, with no redeeming qualities which might make reading his chapters worthwhile in any way. I still haven’t read the ‘Nigel’ chapters of Abyss Beyond Dreams, which meant I was completely confused at the start of this novel, which takes up immediately after the climax to the earlier book.

Thankfully, that’s the last we see of Nigel in this book, and the experience of reading this is immensely better on all levels as a result. The planet of Bienvenido is now outside the Void, so there is no more magic for the population to use, and leaving the Void didn’t remove the Faller menace, in fact it made the planet more susceptible to the hostile alien threat.

The book features the return of one of the most engaging characters in the Commonwealth Universe, but the reveal is handled so well that I’ll not offer up a spoiler in this review.

Bienvenido’s human population is now under the tyrannical rule we saw birthed in the first novel, and the repression of the Enhancer humans has increased. This all sets up the struggle against the Fallers nicely - clearly the human weakness lies in the deliberate repression of their very best people, but its not at all clear that even ending that repression will be enough to save the human population.

There are some wonderful Hamilton touches here - the kludged together inhabitants of another planet now located near Bienvenido being one - and the pacing of the book is pretty much perfect. For only the second time in a row, Hamilton manages to deliver a book in which the word harem is blessedly absent; long may that continue. This isn’t a technically accomplished novel, it brings little new or exciting to the genre, but its a cracking enjoyable read.