Great north road

Peter F. Hamilton is a writer of epic galaxy span­ning space opera science fiction. And all of that is right here on show in Great North Road. But the novel manages the clever trick of also being very down to earth and char­acter focussed.

"In AD 2142, where portal tech­nology allows instan­ta­neous travel to other planets, Newcastle police detec­tive Sidney Hurst heads a high-tech inves­ti­ga­tion of the disturbing murder of a clone of the wealthy North family. Hurst has the added chal­lenge of the poli­tics and media asso­ci­ated with the high profile murder, as well as the opaque mystery itself. The body shows the same wounds as that of Bartram North, murdered twenty years ago on the trop­ical planet St Libra. The bio-fuel that flows from St Libra is a main­stay of Earth's economy and so powerful vested inter­ests are watching over Hurst's shoulder."

At times it feels like you are reading mili­tary science fiction. At others a detec­tive drama. Or maybe corpo­rate espi­onage. All of those things are true, but there's also big big SF ideas and at the heart the mystery of one person. Who is she? What did she do? Why did she do it?

If you've read anything by Peter F. Hamilton before than you'll certainly recog­nize his style right from the begin­ning of this book. The setting in this case is a near future earth (well also a colo­nized planet, but we'll get to that) an the early portion does a lot to set up the world we are dealing with. At this stage it is 90% familiar and 10% science fiction but those science fiction aspects grad­u­ally increase as the story develops.

Great North Road is not set in the Common­wealth universe as many of Hamilton's recent works are. This world is not nearly as advanced. While there have been several signif­i­cant scien­tific break­throughs, not least the gate­ways and the sophis­ti­cated reju­ve­na­tion tech­niques it defi­nitely has the feel of a world not that far from our own.

Hamilton has a habit of writing door stopper books and that's defi­nitely the case here with Great North Road coming in at a whop­ping 1,100 pages in length and he juggles a huge cast of char­ac­ters to tell his story.

Starting with an appar­ently simple murder inves­ti­ga­tion he steadily broadens the scope by intro­ducing the possi­bility of a hostile alien. And then of course there are the North's them­selves, an entire clone family which is a rather fasci­nating concept in its own right.

As big as this book is you might reason­ably expect it to be a bit of a slog but it really isn't. Not only does Hamilton slowly raise the stakes of the tale, but he also rather clev­erly intro­duces an increasing level of para­noia in several of the story strands that he weaves together.

It's both inter­esting and disturbing to watch as that para­noia starts to eat away at people. Making them ques­tion their own judge­ments or act rashly. Hamilton's view of the unvierse is broadly posi­tive but he doesn't ignore that when put in desperate circum­stances people will act badly towards each other.

There's a diver­sity to the char­ac­ters too. One of the central ones is a devout Chris­tian (and it's inter­esting to hear the expla­na­tion for his belief) who is refresh­ingly not any more of an asshole than anyone else.

Autho­rial Tricks

One trick that Hamilton pulls that I'm really not a big fan of is to hold infor­ma­tion back from the audi­ence that they really ought to have access to.

I expect the author to hold back some infor­ma­tion since it adds to the tension in a story, but when a view point char­acter delib­er­ately doesn't think about some­thing just so the reader doesn't know that seems a little sneaky.

Hamilton isn't even apolo­getic in how he does it, having the same char­acter blatantly refer­ence the events and clearly think about them but just not telling us what they are, even though we have access to the same character's other thoughts.

While I'm not a fan of the tech­nique in general it does work well in Great North Road because the mystery of Angela Tremelo (who is she really and if she didn't commit the murders what was she doing?) gives us a core story to wind all the other elements around.

Building The World

While this is a one and done novel, Hamilton clearly gave the universe just as much atten­tion as he did with the Common­wealth Universe.

This world doesn't just have a past (nicely docu­mented at the end so you can follow the time­line of events), but it has a future. It is building to some­thing even if we may never see it. Or maybe we will because there's defi­nitely mate­rial here to support a sequel.

For example the myste­rious alien predator is not the only alien species in this book. In fact the Earth (and its colo­nized planets) are under perpetual threat of inva­sion from the Xanth. A life form so alien that humanity does not under­stand what it is, how it exists or what its purpose is.

That looming threat against the entire of humanity has clearly impacted this world. It has changed the way humans look at the universe and the results are mostly negative.

Another nice touch is the way Hamilton has consid­ered what impact the tech­nolo­gies he has unleashed on his world will have on it. This is clearly a world where all actions have consequences.

Wrap­ping It All Up In A Bow

The ending may be just a little too neat for some people. You could certainly argue it's a bit of a cop out given how the story progressed, but at the same time it does fit the themes of the novel and it doesn't just let everyone completely off the hook By the end there has been a funda­mental change not only in Earth's inter­ac­tion with other planets but how humans look at the universe again.

It's prob­ably fair to say that endings are not tradi­tion­ally Peter F. Hamilton's strongest area. He's very good at devel­oping big ideas, but not always so strong and sticking the landing. Here the ending serves the story, but it's not as strong as earlier sections.

And I guess given what is achieved in this story I feel pretty forgiving of minor weak­nesses like that. The murder inves­ti­ga­tion story on its own would have made an excel­lent book. As would the explo­ration of St. Libra (every­thing is bigger in St. Libra). But wrap­ping that all together with some many char­ac­ters and a bundle of great science fiction concepts earns Hamilton some leeway.

The Great North Road begins as a police procedural, when the body of a rich clone is found in Newcastle. The investigation shows startling similarities to a murder committed years earlier off world, leading to an exploratory expedition to find and neutralize a deadly alien.

Most of the story is told in parallel, with the police investigation switching back and forth with the alien expedition. Hamilton uses his two primary POV characters to lead us through their respective storylines. Sid Hurst is the lead detective investigating the murder in Newcastle. He’s a career cop, & while a bit flawed (it seems that the entire police department is on the take from someone), he’s a sympathetic character. Angela Tramelo is the POV character for the alien sequences. She’s a convict, found guilty of the earlier murders, who is released after the present day murder takes place. Her own story is one of privilege and betrayal, intrigue and revenge. I found it provided the most insight into Hamilton’s world, and yet Tramelo herself was decidedly less sympathetic than Hurst.

Somehow The Great North Road feels like much more than the sum of its parts. Don’t get me wrong, the parts themselves were enjoyable & well executed, if not the strongest examples of their type. The police procedural was a bit below Stross’ Halting State novels. The alien hunting expedition was often reminiscent of Predator. Still, the detail and thought of these storylines made for a compelling and very enjoyable read.

The Great North Road is a big book. Big in length as well as story. There are numerous flashbacks and subplots to be explored. But if you are willing to put in the work, you’ll find it to be one of the best SF reads of the year.