Please note, The Saints of Salvation is the final book in The Salvation Sequence. If you haven’t read Salvation and Salvation Lost then what follows is going to contain some minor spoilers. My advice would be to toddle off and read them both first. You can thank me later.
Live in hiding – or die for freedom
Humanity welcomed the Olyix and their utopian technology. But mankind was tricked. Now these visitors are extracting a terrible price.
For two years, the Olyix have laid siege to Earth, harvesting its people for their god. One by one, cities are falling to their devastating weaponry. And while millions have fled to seek refuge in space, others continue to fight an apparently unwinnable war.
As Earth’s defeat draws near, a team attempts to infiltrate the Salvation of Life – the Olyix’s arkship. If it succeeds, those chosen will travel to a hidden enclave thousands of light years away. Once there, they must signal its location to future generations, to bring the battle to the enemy. Maybe allies scattered throughout space and time can join forces. Yet in the far future, humanity are still hunted by their ancient adversary. And as forces battle on in the cold reaches of space, hope seems distant indeed . . .
Ahh, book three in a trilogy. The grand finale, the last hurrah. I’ve been waiting for The Saints of Salvation to reach the top of my review pile and I’m ecstatic that it has finally arrived. After months of idle speculation, I get the opportunity to discover humanity’s fate.
If you’re reading this review then chances are, like me, you’ve invested your time in reading the first two books in this series. The good news is that the wait for the final pay off has been worth it. The Saints of Salvation is exactly what I have come to expect from a Peter F Hamilton novel – grand awe-inspiring celestial vistas and plots that manage to be both devilishly simple yet also fiendishly complex. I can confidently confirm you’ll find all that and more in his latest masterwork.
As with its predecessors, the narrative charts two distinct time periods in our future history. In the twenty-third century the Olyix have just about decimated Earth. Billions have been ‘saved’ by our friendly neighbourhood religious zealots. Those humans who remain free can do little more than run and hide. Meanwhile, many thousands of years in the far future, what is left of the human race has reached the point where they are ready to fight back. The Saints of Salvation is all about weaving these two, seemingly disparate, threads of plot together. Needless to say, the author does this and makes it look easy while doing so. Hamilton has created a giant, irresistible cosmic puzzle, and in book three of the trilogy the final pieces fall neatly into place.
As I’ve mentioned before, as soon as anyone starts mentioning things like quantum entanglement and relativistic space travel, internal alarm bells start going off. The difference between Peter F Hamilton and some other sci fi authors I’ve read is that his writing manages to make the science feel almost optional. You can choose to engage with it if you want but you don’t have to. I’ll be honest, all the theory and explanation is not for me but that has not once ever driven me away from Hamilton’s work. What can I say? Time paradoxes man, they get me every time.
The final climatic showdown is so mind-bendingly huge it just about made my feeble old brain blow a gasket. No-one else quite manages to create the same level of scale as Hamilton when it comes to spectacle. I swear there are moments, so perfectly captured, it feels like you are gazing into the infinite. I don’t suppose that can ever be a bad thing when you are talking about the vast expanse of the cosmos.
The impressive thing is that the author also has that knack of scaling things right down to a personal level. Though the book, like most of Hamilton’s other works, has quite an ensemble cast, he is deft at turning his focus to individuals. The relationship between Yirella and Dellian is a good example. There are scenes between the two that feel intimate, almost voyeuristic, in nature. We see glimpses of a couple just trying to survive in the midst of universe altering events.
There is a nice little coda at the novel’s end that suggests we have just reached the end of the beginning and there is far further still left to travel. I can only hope this is the case. I’ve become so invested in the characters I would love to know what happens next*.
The Salvation Sequence remains consistent throughout and is right up there with Peter F Hamilton’s best. Not a surprise really, I love the Night’s Dawn trilogy and the Greg Mandel novels are superb. This latest series is just as good. Hamilton is a master in the art of epic science fiction, it’s evident on every page.
The Saints of Salvation is published by Pan Macmillan and is available now. It is the perfect conclusion to a perfect science fiction trilogy. I don’t think I can offer a higher compliment than that.
I agonized over my musical recommendation to accompany this novel. It had to be something special, something suitably grand. Ultimately, I’ve gone with the soundtrack to No Man’s Sky by 65daysofstatic. There is something about the tone of the music that captures all the different elements in Hamilton’s work that just feels right.
*I can’t help it. I always want to know what is just over the next hill or just round the next corner. I’m naturally inquisitive in that respect.
No Comments