Friday, September 20, 2002
Title: Fallen Dragon
Author: Peter F. Hamilton
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Following the massive work that is the Night's Dawn trilogy Peter F. Hamilton returns with Fallen Dragon - this time a one-off book rather than a trilogy, but still in itself a hefty read at over 800 pages. Fallen Dragon is also a story on a tighter scale, rather than spanning dozens of characters and planets sticking to one character and covering his life.
Lawrence Newton is a Sergeant in a corporate strike force, involved in what the organisation euphemistically calls "asset-realisation" and the planets subject to the act refer to as bloody piracy. Newton grew up on a colony planet, the son of the board member, the man technically in charge of the planet. This wasn't where Lawrence wanted to go though, he dreamed of being an explorer, of flying ships to new planets. To this end he breaks away from his home planet, his home company and goes to earth to join another company. But to earn enough of a stake to be eligible for pilot training he has to join up as a trooper. Twenty years later and he is still in the ranks, but has seen a dozen planets in his time. When he was on Thallspring before he came across something that made him suspicious. With a new trip to Thallspring planned he makes sure he is involved convinced that whatever it is that is out there will be enough for him to retire. However Thallspring is waiting for them, ready to show the resistance they couldn't offer the last time. And Newton and his comrades soon find themselves at the centre of a constant guerrilla war, but it all seems to be a cover for some local organisation who are a lot more organised and capable than they should be.
Throughout Fallen Dragon Hamilton switches back and forth between each chapter, covering the present of Newton's preparation for the mission then involvement in, then back in time following his life story and how he became who he is today. To a lesser extent than in Night's Dawn there is also narrative following other characters, which is one of Hamilton's strengths, fleshing out a range of characters to give the narrative a greater depth and allowing for view points which fill in the gaps that the lead character can't provide. Further contrasts to Night's Dawn come from the general level of human culture. In Night's Dawn it seemed that the human culture was unstoppable, wondrous technology, harmonious relations with alien races and an abundance of planets to be found. In Fallen Dragon the human race has hit a plateau, space travel isn't paying off and is slowly being curtailed, where everything in ND has a nice solution in FD it is awkward and unpleasant. Which provides an interesting contrast, perhaps Hamilton feels that his characters had it too easy - here something as "simple" as space travel is an unpleasant experience.
Of course one wonders whether after ND Hamilton finds it difficult to write anything that is brief, while the scope of the book covers this one trip the scale of his writing makes it into an epic and the result still has universe spanning results. Which provides for the build of the ending, which while not as sweeping and god scale event as ND is certainly potentially plateau shifting.
RVWR: PTR
September 2002
