The Neutronium Alchemist: Part II - Conflict [Mass Market Paperback]

The Neutronium Alchemist: Conflict, is the second part of the second novel of Peter F. Hamilton's space opera epic that ranges not only across interstellar space but across the boundary between life and death. (The series begins with The Reality Dysfunction: Emergence and Expansion). This book mainly revolves around Dr. Alkad Mzu, creator of a doomsday weapon so powerful it scares even the citizens of this high-tech and heavily beweaponed future. Mzu is on a decades-long quest to take vengeance against the people who destroyed her home planet, and she wields alarming cunning and ruthlessness in the pursuit. But what gives even her pause is the war against the souls of the dead who have returned from a hellish Beyond to possess the living. Both sides want her: the dead want the weapon, the living want to keep the weapon out of the dead's hands. Unfortunately for them, that means they must find and take Mzu alive, while all the dead need to do is kill her, bringing her into their realm.

Rarely has science fiction produced a series as rich, satisfying, and big as this one. In addition to the action, Hamilton continues to beguile us with the greater mystery of the returned dead--new clues are discovered, only to create new enigmas. --Brooks Peck

The souls of those long dead are entering the universe at an alarming rate. Stealing the bodies of the living, they are grouping together into powerful consortiums led by leaders from history. An increasingly desperate Confederation Navy is struggling to stem the tide as the race for the universe's most powerful weapon begins. But if the dead can return to life, who will be the ultimate victors?

Peter F. Hamilton was born in Rutland in 1960, and still lives near Rutland Water with his wife and daughter. He began writing in 1987, and sold his first short story to Fear magazine in 1988. He has also been published in Interzone and the In Dreams and New Worlds anthologies, and several small-press publications. His previous novels include the Greg Mandel series: Mindstar Rising, A Quantum Murder and The Nano Flower and the 'Night's Dawn' trilogy: The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist and The Naked God, which established him as Britain's bestselling writer of science fiction and a major name in global science fiction writing. His ten novels and one handbook (a vital guide to the 'Night's Dawn' trilogy) have sold almost two million copies worldwide.