Book 4 of 6 in this series, sort of. Let’s see if I can list all the sub-plots going on:
- Alkad Mzu running, and the various people chasing her: Joshua Calvert, the Edenist intelligence service, the Kulu intelligence service, and the Capone organization.
- Kiera Salter luring Deadknights to Valisk
- Rubra (the Valisk habitat personality) wooing Dariat
- The Capone Organization’s invasion plans.
- Louise Kavanaugh, Genevieve Kavanaugh, and Fletcher Christian’s refugee flights to get to Tranquility eventually
- Oenone and Syrinx’ returning to flight status
- Gerald Skibbow’s plans to free his daughter Marie from Kiera Salter
- The Kulu kingdom’s plans to free part of one of their planets from the possessed.
- The Confederation’s studies of captured Jacqueline Couteur
- The Laymil investigation, and the Kiint’s interest in it
- Dexter Quinn’s plot to bring the Confederation under the thrall of the Light Bringer
- The escape of the Villeneuve’s Revenge
- The collection of children on Ombey by the possessed to return them to the non-possessed.
I may have forgotten one or two sub-plots. That’s a lot to keep track of. That’s the biggest problem with both The Reality Dysfunction and The Neutronium Alchemist. There’s too damn much to follow. Though looking at this list, and in reading it, none of them really mattered much in this installment except the Calvert-Mzu sub-plot. Everything else is in a holding pattern until The Naked God. TRD felt like more of it mattered throughout the story, but TNA feels like it’s a transition between the two books.
I’m also a little ticked that this story is more fantasy than science fiction. Too much of the technology is just Star Trek reverse the polarity
mumbo-jumbo after which someone pulls something previously unknown out of their bag of tricks. But Hamilton probably cared more about the space opera than he did about constructing a coherent milieu. The one that irritated me the most was the introduction of ghosts, but the newfound ability of the possessed to do some serious talking with souls from the beyond was a close second.
Strangely, what’s keeping me interested in the story is not really any of the plots listed above (well, partially one), but the involvement of the Kiint and other aliens. And the second is the brief introduction of two beings who are immune from attacks by the possessed (as well as others it seems) and who have been around for ages, observing humanities struggle with the possessed. I did like the Joshua Calvert-Alkad Mzu chase as well, but everything else was kind of blah for me. As those plots get more involved in The Naked God they may reignite my interest.
Title: The neutronium alchemist: part 2: conflict
Author: Peter F. Hamilton
Series: Night’s Dawn trilogy, second half of book 2
Imprint / publisher: Aspect / Warner Books / Time Warner
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 575 p.
Publication date: May 1998
ISBN-10: 0-446-60546-8
LC classification: PR6058.A5536 N483 1997
