"
The Neutronium Alchemist" is the second installment in the "
Night's Dawn"
trilogy by
science fiction author Peter F Hamilton. Part 1 is called "
The Reality Dysfunction" and the final installment is "
The Naked God". And to just hammer the point home right away before all this
descriptive junk below, all three novels are great. Read them.
"
The Neutronium Alchemist" picks up pretty much exactly where "
The Reality Dysfunction" leaves off. The focus moves away from the local to the
interplanetary level as the
Navy,
Edenists and
Kulu Kingdom attempt to stop the advance of the
possessed. However, as the name of the
novel suggests, the central plot thread to this book is not the
possessed themselves but the hunt for Doctor Alkad Mzu and her
Alchemist superweapon.
There is more sign of
character development in this book than there perhaps was in book one. The effects of their experiences weigh heavily on
protagonist Joshua Calvert and especially
Syrinx. If possible the scale of the
story which Hamilton is telling actually gets larger.
We also learn a lot more about the
possessed. Hamilton doesn't take the easy way out here. Not all of the
possessed are
evil by any means. A few of them are very
sympathetic characters. The exploration of which solutions can be achieved to the problem of the possessed is interesting. All the players are forced into
military action for lack of a better alternative.
Interestingly, having avoided
famous dead people in book one, Hamilton now brings two
historical characters into play. I was a little dubious about the use of
Fletcher Christian and downright worried when I realised who "
Al" was. I shouldn't have been. Hamilton handles both these characters convincingly.
The book ends on a simultaneously upbeat and worrying note with two positively huge
cliffhangers for the reader to worry over. Make sure you have "
The Naked God" available when you finish "
The Neutronium Alchemist".