Judas Unchained

Very good story, sucky writing

A brief review of Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton

Judas Unchained concludes the story begun in Pandora's Star. In both novels, Peter F. Hamilton displays an excellently conceived near future of humanity extending three or four hundred years hence. He imagines the consequences of the availability of wormholes for use in exploring space and finding habitable planets for new human settlements, eliminating the need for rocket ships.

There's a good deal of depth to this story. Hamilton paints an intriguing picture of this multiplanetary society, its politics, its social structure, its ways of interacting with with the intelligent nonhumans it finds itself sharing a galaxy with. He creates characters with enough personality and backstory that one cares about them and tends to remember who is who while reading through these thick tomes.

The story told is based around the excellently imagined wormhole technology and advances in medicine, particularly rejuvenation. The plot has to do with the discovery of a particularly dangerous intelligence in a distant star system and how it and humans attempt to deal with each other.

I am loathe to spoil anyone's reading experience, so I won't go into the details at all. I will just say that the story is full of twists and turns and surprises, plenty of action and armaments, a well-done extrapolation of current mores into a relatively near future and the effect that not really having to die anymore has on individuals and society, including the criminal justice system.

There are some high moments, not much boring slogging, and I was occasionally moved to tears or laughter and real empathy with some of the characters. It's really a good story!

Unfortunately, it's poorly written. When I say that, I don't mean that the dialogs are unbelievable or the characters unengaging, nor do I mean that the story is a shambles or disorganized. That is not the case. I have to give Hamilton kudos for his ability to keep things as straight as he does. He tells a good, stimulating story. He just can't write properly.

What I mean by that is that there are masses of writing errors throughout both books. They are plentiful on every page. This is a cause of mental pain for any reader who actually knows how to speak and write correct English. This is the reason I won't be picking up any more books by Peter Hamilton unless I have good reason to believe that they, unlike Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained, have been properly edited by someone who knows how to do it. Hamilton seemingly is not up to the job.

What is so irritating with Hamilton's writing? To begin with, he doesn't have a clue about how to use commas. It's not hard to learn, but you have to consciously know the basics of sentence structure and be prepared to apply common sense in your writing. If you can't do that, you really have no business writing in English for money. This is simply basic.

Another screamingly irritating aspect of Hamilton's writing is that he neither knows the difference between the words which and that nor which should be used where and why. It's pitiful, inexcusable, that these errors are plentiful on every page of these two novels.

Equally unforgivable are the many congruence errors in Hamilton's writing. Here, again, the cure is basic knowledge of sentence structure and grammar rules, stuff that any truly professional writer, and by that I mean someone who loves and cares for the language, will work to keep in mind. Hamilton repeatedly pairs a plural verb with a singular subject, and vice versa.

Hamilton also needs to improve his relationship with his dictionaries, or perhaps invest in some good ones. He has a tendency to use real words the wrong way: verdure as an adjective, for example, when what he wants is verdant; jury-rigged when what he wants is jerry-rigged.

I think an author ought to remember how he has chosen to spell a character's name, especially when it occurs repeatedly on the same page. Short memory span, Pete?

The upshot of all this is that Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained read more like first drafts than final drafts. No supposed differences between British and American English excuse the sloppiness of Hamilton's writing. The way I see it, anyone wearing the title author has a responsibility not to mislead or abuse the reader linguistically. There's a clear risk in the present case that Hamilton's language errors will be accepted as correct usage by the younger or less well-educated reader and thus be perpetuated in the innocent.

I'm perfectly willing to accept an occasional error in anyone's writing. Even with careful editing, it's possible to miss mistakes, but the careful reader coming across these in a published work will see them for the exceptions they are and not adopt them as correct usage.

An author unable or unwilling to thoroughly vet a manuscript has an obligation to see to it that it is properly edited by someone who knows how to do it before it goes into print. I found myself wondering if the iBooks version of Pandora's Star was an accident, an early draft made into an e-book by mistake. I wanted to see how the story would end, so I read Judas Unchained in hopes that it would be a properly edited version. No such luck!

I cut my sci-fi teeth on Robert Heinlein when I was a young man, found Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke a bit further down the road, then was completely bowled over by Roger Zelazny and remain so to this day. Oh, Lord of Light! These men could write! And they knew their language. Peter Hamilton in not of their caliber.

I've seen Hamilton compared with Dickens and Tolstoy on a web site. Sheesh! Hamilton is the pizza deliverer to Dickens and Tolstoy.