The Reality Dysfunction is the first part of a trilogy named Night's Dawn Trilogy. At 1264 pages in paperback, it is the first part of a story that is going to be a whopper. And it is science fiction. Kinda odd, you might think after so many years of mammoth fantasy. Can someone do a gigantic science fiction trilogy? Some have tried. A few have failed but the exception has been Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books. Reading Robinson made me realize why I read SF and have done so for better than forty years. When it is done well, it makes my heart sing and my soul tremble. But back to Peter F. Hamilton and The Reality Dysfunction. Yep, he was able to carry it off (at least for this part of the trilogy) with blistering style and prodigious detail. Characters didn't blend together; each had a distinctive voice. The plot didn't lag. My oh my, there are so many of them, too. But I had no trouble following or remembering them. If you don't buy this stunner, you'll be missing a treat that doesn't come by often.

Let me give you a taste of what it is about. On a start-up colony planet, a chance meeting between an indentured sociopath and an alien entity (no rubber alien suit here) blends the two together forming an outwardly human hive collective. Spreading disorder and rebellion, he and his followers escape the planet to begin spreading through out the Confederation. Nothing seems capable of stopping them. The Navy tries, a group of privateers try, the AI consciousness running space platforms tries, the alien scientists try. Even the galaxy's worst bad guy exiled to a planet without escape (yeah, right) tries. They all recognize that unless somebody stops this monster, their civilization will disappear (along with most of the folk living there). I gotta read the next two parts.

Rodger has read a lot of science fiction and fantasy in forty years. He can only shake his head and say, "So many books, so little time."