Great North Road

Painfully slow and dreary, and the author has some strange need to name everywhere in the North East. One paragraph named like 5 roads on Team Valley. I get naming some local places to anchor it with the reader, but this goes way beyond that. Read the Tyne And Wear A-Z very slowly and you'll have more fun. 

I came into this book having enjoyed Hamilton's Commenwealth series. Great North Road doesn't disappoint, giving a well realised future world with plausible future technologies and the societal dilemmas that come from them.

The overall story is enjoyable, but it is a little over-long. As with his previous books, there are multiple story arcs at play that reveal the whole story over time. In this book my favourite arc was (by far) the future-tech detective story on earth. Unfortunately the other arc set off-world was less successful; it ended up being over-long and there were too many moments where the inability of the characters to put 1 and 1 together to make 2 became very frustrating; it almost seemed like excuses to help pad the story out further for a few more action packed scenes.

Despite mild reservations, overall the book is a success and enjoyable; I would still definitely …