I’m not sure anyone does chunky, blockbuster space opera better than Peter F. Hamilton – I hoovered up his Night’s Dawn trilogy (well over 3,000 pages in paperback) and the shorter (by his standards) Commonwealth Saga, after being introduced to his work via the excellent standalone Fallen Dragon. Now he has returned to the Commonwealth universe for another tree-intensive trilogy, of which this is the first volume, with the second, The Temporal Void, recently published. Hundreds of years have passed since the Starflyer War consumed the Commonwealth, and there have been huge technological and political changes from the society that we encountered in the Commonwealth Saga: the wormhole network that allowed the easy spread of the Starflyer is gone, replaced by starship travel; the ability has been developed for humans to leave their physical bodies and upload in to Advanced Neural Architecture, which effectively runs human affairs; there is a deep split between the Higher societies, where people will ultimately upload to ANA, and Advancers, who believe in genetic manipulation to improve the human race. In short, humanity is far from united.

The centre of the galaxy contains a void (called… the Void), which it is believed has the potential to envelop whole star systems if stimulated. When a research scientist called Inigo, studying the Void, starts to dream about the lives of humans who previously managed to enter it, the dreams eventually come to form the basis of an entire religion, Living Dream, whose followers revere Inigo as the Dreamer and aspire to make a pilgrimage in to the Void, something which advanced species like the Raiel, as well as many factions of humanity, are determined to prevent lest it trigger an expansion which destroys everything. The stage is set for one of Hamilton’s classic many-stranded plots and large cast of characters.

As always with Hamillton, there are multiple key characters, each with their own backstory and place in the overall structure. Among others, we have: Aaron, who has no memories of who he is, but all the skills and resources he needs to track down the missing Dreamer Inigo; we have Araminta, a young property developer struggling to get ahead, who has no idea of her significance to the Living Dream movement; we have several characters resurrected or prolonged from the previous Commonwealth Saga, like the singleminded investigator Paula Myo, Justine Burnelli and her father Gore, and Oscar Monroe, who sacrificed himself to stop the Starflyer. Most intriguingly of all, we have Edeard, whose life was dreamed by Inigo. Edeard lives inside the Void, in a pre-industrial society which has forgotten all about its spacefaring past and regressed to a more feudal state. Things are different in the Void – everyone has psychic powers to some degree, and these are a defining characteristic of life there. Because of the absence of hard technology, Hamilton has a chance to demonstrate his skills in what is essentially a fantasy setting, and he does it very well indeed, with Inigo’s dreams being some of the most enjoyable parts of the book.

At 791 pages, this is not a book for the faint-hearted, but I did enjoy it a great deal. As usual with Hamilton, things take a little while to get moving, and I do think he could spend a little bit less time putting his characters’ lives in context – occasionally you want to skip on from the mechanics of interior decoration in the far future (they can prolong human life indefinitely but they haven’t found a way to stop swadust clogging up the filters, apparently!) and other such trivia. This is a minor gripe, however, and does not change the fact that Hamilton is one of the few writers who can effectively combine vast sweep and a fine grasp of detail to deliver a coherent and compelling vision of humanity among the stars.

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