The Neutronium Alchemist: Part I - Consolidation (Mass Market Paperback)

Despite the innane sex and pre-pubescent heroes rife in this series, I enjoyed the 'Reality Dysfunction' enough to suffer this second instalment to the series. Tragically Hamilton's creative insticts seem to have left him in this turgid and irritatingly repetitve novel. The plot is broken into a number of tenuously related stories; Dr Mzu tracking down her planet buster with intelligence agents and our juvenile 20 year old hero, Joshua, in hot pursuit; Quinn zipping off to earth to wreak his vengeance; the Confederation attempting to deal with AL Capone and various enclaves of the possessed; and other more or less significant side stories. In each of them, the one dimensional unoriginal central figures move from one act of stupidity to another. The pursuit of Dr Mzu is tragic. She eacapes the clutches of her pursuers only to run foul of them again and again. They reminded me of a Japanese TV drama where the two predestined lovers are brought tantalisingly close to some kind of resolution or closure only to have it ripped from them by some mindless act of stupidity and misunderstanding. Other strands of the narrative follow a similar pattern. There is so much procrastination!

Probably what I found most ceaslessly irritating was the cast of morons brought together by Hamilton to save the universe. Joshua epitomizes the shallow teen dork we have all come to know and hate from somewhere in our lives. He experiences a bit of late 'teen angst' after his dead mate tells him not to treat his girls so poorly. Wow. It is wonderfully pathetic. But he is not the only stupid one. With the galaxy on the brink of Chaos and humanity's resources stretched to the limit, one wouold think anything that could be done would be done. But no! One of the demon-evil possessed is in scientific 'torture-like' surveillance. She demands to see a lawyer and naturally is 'released' into a courtroom to chat about whether this kind of treatment is really kind of below the belt, or unsportsmanlike, as it were. Predictably, she explodes and kills people for a few minutes before being subdued again. Tragically for humanity, this allows important intelligence to be passed on to the dead and Al Capone to save his entire fleet of possessed starships. Doh!

Al Capone, the silly tart banging him, and the and whole '101 most loved' undead people thing only adds to maelstrom of irritation unleashed in this book.

As others before me have said, this is pulp. And like them I found myself flicking through the storylines I could no longer endure. I have never felt so enervated after a book in all my life.

But what's the use? Some people seem to have enjoyed it. But then again some people ike Nascar and Daytime TV soaps... If you have read the first book in the series you will probably read this. After that, do yourself a favour and read Jack Vance 'Demon Princes' series. Now that is writing!

I hardly ever flat out stop reading a book and give up. That's what I did with Neutronium Alchemist. Even more tedious than the first book - Reality Dysfunction. Just as goofy (dead coming back to possess the living?!?). Even more intricate subplots that disappear for what seems like hundreds of pages at a time. Just as much gratuitous sex and gore. And finally Hamilton pushes it over the top by bringing back Al Capone. Gimme a break.<...

There is little point in trying to summarise what happens in this book. That would defeat the point in reading the book! What I can say, is that the pace is just as frenetic, and the detail continues to build in this episode of the story. Excellent stuff, and well worth keeping up with the series.