The Naked God: Flight - Part 1 (Hardcover)

In the Naked God you can see the need for splitting it into two books. It really is a monster. But not a bad monster, a great one, a really juicy piece of reading.

If you haven't read the earlier books, the rest of this review will make no sense. But I wholeheartedly recommend this series to any fan of hard sci-fi or of space opera. Even fantasy readers are delighted by the broad canvas and the exploration of the lines between life and afterlife, finity and eternity.

If you have been following the story so far, this volume concentrates on five main story threads.

Dexter Quinn is travelling, in Odysseus-like fashion, to a reunion with the Enigmatic Banneth on Earth. Along the way he is trailed by the strange and powerful force that obstructed him on Norfolk. Is this a manifestation of Laton? Or is there some other answer?

Following the same route, but on a voyage of personal growth and discovery is Louise Kavanagh, who is trying to fulfill a promise to warn Banneth and thwart the evil plans of Quinn. Through her travels we learn the details of earth and near-earth society, and the machinations of the Archology Dictators who control all that happens on the future Earth.

Across the Universe we continue to follow the adventures of the Sinbad/Lancelot like Joshua Calvert in his quest for the Holy Grail that is the Tyrathca Sleeping God, and in the process we learn some home truths about the Tyrathca and Kiint races.

Outside of our continuum we follow events on the Valisk habitat and on Norfolk, where things are not going how the possessed thought they would.

Finally, we continue to follow the fortunes of the possessed within our universe on Mortonridge and on New California. In this book we follow the fortunes of the military campaign on Mortonridge lead by Ralph Hiltch.

Add in the storylines about Kiera and her Hellhawks, Al and Jezibella, the real Kiint Homeworlds and their human spies, disappearing habitats, hellish energy draining monsters and you begin to touch the complexity that is the universe created by Hamilton.

Resolving humanity's situation with the possessed by resorting to a magical technology takes care of the immediate crisis without solving the underlying problem of people's fear of death. By contrast, when the older, more advanced Kiint faced the problem of the possessed, they resolved it in a way that enlightened the entire species.

Without reducing humanity's fear of death, their possession problem will likely occur again. This is a very unsatisfying resolution to an otherwise awesome series.