The Commonwealth Saga by Peter F Hamilton

Attempting to do any review of such a broad work is an act of futility if you're seeking to be thorough. So here is a general, impressionist review.

Hamilton's greatest accomplishment in TCS is not completely losing the reader in the vast smorgasbord of character, plot and setting. Though there are significant problems within.

The setting pieces are far too long. I suffered through page after page of needless detail about a woman's hang-gliding experience, simply to tell me that a planet gets bad storms. A main character does nothing but go on extended romps from planet to planet using a fairy pathway in his desperation to get home, picking up a stray human and a tag-along alien that adds nothing to the plot or character development.

Innumerable action sequences seem to think they are part of a movie and not a book, taking far too long for too little plot or character development. There was even an enormous court case on an unrelated matter that introduced three main characters in a stretch of time far longer than they needed.

Overall, definitely 25% could have been taken out of the Saga without the reader missing anything. But for all the unnecessary extreme bloat, he does a lot of things right.

The villains/antagonists of the piece were very well incepted and designed, and we had absolutely no idea who the enemy was until the exact right moment, when all the pieces fit together. It was brilliant when it happened, and I shook my head in admiration at Hamilton's patience in bringing the mystery to the correct place in time.

The characters were varied and their reactions to the technological settings were varied and complex, with few simplistic answers for how to live in a complex society such as the Commonwealth. Iain M Banks' Culture series could have learned much from Hamilton's realistic examination of human nature, which never ventures excessively into 'grimdark' nor dreamy utopianism.

The setting was the clear winner in the enjoyment sweepstakes. The transport wormholes, mental-command computing and virtual immortality asked and answered many complicated 'what if' and 'but then how' questions. Hamilton never shies away from difficult questions, and his answers, while not always complex as his questions, certainly satisfy the average speculative reader's curiosity.

I recommend the two books of the Saga, but with the firm caveat that one should expect to skip pages if they wish to maintain their heightened enjoyment of the series when they get to a point they find less entertaining.

The Lathe Of Heaven, by Ursula K Le Guin

Lathe, over forty years old, is a masterpiece I wish I'd been aware of years ago.

It perfectly builds character, magic system and plot in such bold but subtle masterful strokes that you are left humbled in the wake of a master writer.

So easily do you come to understand and sympathize, yet ultimately dislike the villain Haber. You are annoyed with, but are ultimately won over by the hapless protagonist, George Orr. And when the love interest comes into play, I genuinely did not see it coming until there was a romance.

Motifs of meetings in restaurants and Portland's nearby Mt. Hood crop up in every altered reality. They both remind us of the place we have come from and how the metaphors begin to shift in every new chapter and take on new meaning.

Most of all, it is a short book. Many writers today (especially myself) could take a well-needed lesson on how to write insightful poignancy with a compelling climax, without needing ridiculous subplots or an excess of technical explanations.

I felt something I rarely feel when reading this novel. Jealousy. Jealousy that someone could hone the craft with such precision that it remains a masterful piece of reading forty-three years later.

Well done, Ms Le Guin.