Stodgy progress toward a
quick, flawed conclusion (3/5)
How do you face 1,332 pages?
How do you confront 469,000
words?
My solution: Dedicate as many
waking moments of my day for 16 consecutive days. I could have read four or
five normal-sized novels in the same time, but I chose to finish Hamilton’s
Night’s Dawn trilogy.
I may have glutted on the first two books, requiring two months of
recovery before attempting to finish the trilogy; in foresight and hindsight,
this was a wise choice. My grasp of the numerous plots didn’t slacken and,
after all that time away, I had developed a thirst for immersing myself into a
thick novel. The only other to-be-read novel in my collection which comes close
to rival this length is Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666.
Hamilton’s The Naked God
is a rite of initiation (after this, all books are short), a rite of passage (I
would have eventually read this), and rite of finality (the trilogy’s capstone).
It might be a superlative novel in some regards, but the grammatical
superlative “greatest novel” I cannot bequeath; rather, the base form adjective
“satisfactory” must be used without any use of emphatics.
Rear cover synopsis:
“The Confederation is starting
to collapse politically and economically, allowing the ‘possessed’ to
infiltrate more worlds.
Quinn Dexter is loose on Earth,
destroying the giant arcologies one at a time. As Louise Kavanagh tries to
track him down, she manages to acquire some strange and powerful allies whose
goal doesn’t quite match her own. The campaign to liberate Mortonridge from the
possessed deteriorates into a horrendous land battle, the kind that hasn’t been
seen by humankind for six hundred years; then some of the protagonists escape
in a very unexpected way. Joshua Calvert and Syrinx fly their starships on a
mission to find the Sleeping God—which an alien race believes holds the key to
overthrowing the possessed.”
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Quinn Dexter has made it to the
surface of Earth using his dark powers to conceal himself and infiltrate key
arcologies. Though his desire to see Banneth dead in Calgary, New York is on
his immediate list to seed with the possessed, who will in turn seed other
cities across Earth. Little does he know that Earth has been watching out for
him, trying to understand hi s motives and figuring out how to destroy him
before he destroys the planet. The secretive and powerful B7 group flexes its
might to cordon off entire arcologies, quarantine cities and shut down transportation;
the danger is unparalleled, so their efforts reflect this.
The B7 group also has a
avuncular eye out for Louise Kavanagh and her sister Genevieve. The upper-class
sisters from the devastated planet Norfolk utilize their father’s wealth in
London while staying at the Ritz, splurging on outfits and even implanting a
neural net (against the taboos of her home world). B7 understands the
importance of her connection to Dexter; they strategize ways to allow Louise
free reign of transport and indulgences. Her naivety is valued by B7.
Louise’s beau, Joshua, has been
selected to head a mission to find out what and where the Sleeping God is. The
Kiint are interested in the Sleeping God, too. With Syrinx, their first
destination is a anti-matter production station which Capone is using to fuel
his war against the Confederation. This visit kills two birds with one stone: (1)
Joshua gets loaded up with essential anti-matter fuel for the 1,000+ light-year
journey and (2) they can destroy Capone’s only source for anti-matter. However,
when Capone’s fleet comes to refuel, they see the Confederation ships, which
results in a standoff. One ship hangs back observing their next jump, a jump
which is aimed either at empty space, meant to deter following, or toward one
of the Tyrathca colony home worlds.
Since the habitat Valisk had
been transported through the ether to a senseless, dark universe, the
ex-possessed suffer with cancerous growths and ghosts haunt the surface, one of
which is Dariat, who is still in tune with the mind of the habitat. The wisps
of darker mist outside the habitat don’t interact with its mass, but probing
beyond the mist proves fruitless. Unexpectedly, something from the void visits
them, smashing through the windowed hull and attaching itself to a source of
energy. Soon, these nebulous aliens gather more and more in order to seep away
the life force of the habitat, but not without a fight by tooth, nail, and,
most importantly, with flame.
Having lost his secret anti-matter
station, Al Capone must find other ways to antagonize his enemy: the powerful
yet abstract Confederation. He decides to rain terror onto local worlds by
seeding them with possessed, too. Each planet’s orbital defense network
destroys most of the shot attempts, but only one survivor is enough to turn a
planet from non-possessed to full-blown possessed. One of his most devastating missions—sending
a human bomb to Traflagar—comes to fruition and really, really pisses off the
Confederation. Capone may not have realized the repercussions of the attack
until it’s too late.
The Kingdom of Kulu has decided
to post a massive front against the possessed on the planey of Ombey. Effectively
sealed off, the attack begins with the orbital defense platforms firing lasers
down upon the red cloud hanging over the province. The band of orbiting lasers
pour dispersed energy into the cloud, into the possessed generating it, and
into every single possessed person in the Confederation. When the cloud dissolves,
the moisture that was pent up is released in an epic rainfall which erodes the
land, turning everything into mud. The ground forces, mechanic bodies of transferred
personalities, must trudge through the mud and capture and evict the possessed
from every single little town of the province… except the patch of land where
resistance quickly becomes escape when the entire landmass under their feet
disappears. Now in a soupy dark void, tens of thousands of soldiers are
displaced and thousand of the possessed must face death by suffocation as the
air is slowly used up.
Meanwhile, Ione and her habitat
Tranquility had faded an attack by Capone but, rather than sit and die,
Tranquility instantly materializes in Jupiter orbit, shocking everyone and
giving the Confederation a damn near heart attack. The Kiint were less sure of
the tactic and displaced themselves through space to their home world, a
distant location where a necklace of planets circle a sun unknown to humans…
well, most humans that is. The Kiint’s secret ability to transport themselves
is also shared with a number of human “observers” who had witnessed the last
two thousand years of human history and now are trying to intervene; should the
Kiint assist the humans in ridding themselves of the possessed or is their
non-intervention policy an ethical choice?
They live in interesting times.
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Though I finished the novel in
sixteen days, the book felt sluggish. With 300 pages left, I couldn’t see how
all the plot lines could wrap up in time… then with 200 pages left, I again
couldn’t see how everything could be resolved… with 100 pages left, I suspected
everything would be revolved thanks to some deux ex machina; and
certainly, my suspicions proved correct. With over 3,400 pages dedicated to the
trilogy, how could everything boil down to a one-all solution (the end to The
Reality Dysfunction offered a hint). The plot thread which leads to the novel’s
conclusion is tenuous; the impetus is weak, the follow-through is linear and
the finale is too grandiose. While the
vehicle for the deux ex machine isn’t exactly “out of the blue”, the
reality and function is what tips the ridiculousness scale.
A novel could be written about
the deux ex machine in this trilogy, or perhaps a trilogy itself.
As mentioned above, the numerous
plot thread felt hasty; they trudge along at a snail’s pace without developing
very much meanwhile feeling like the reader was simply being set up for
something (that something is the deux ex machine). Reading the third book
in the trilogy felt stodgy, a very inorganic process following the preceding
two books… in other words, it felt forced (much like the conclusion).
Then there are holes in the
trilogy:
1. Why did Laton, way way back in Book 1, sacrifice
himself and offer a message reassuring people that there is a way past the
beyond: not everyone is doomed to be a wandering soul (with very little satisfaction,
there is an answer to this and it affects the course of mankind’s future
history). The importance of his role in the first third of the book could be
the stuff of a prequel, but words of assurance don’t return until the
conclusion is drawing out.
2. As Joshua is gallivanting about the galaxy in his
anti-matter powered spaceship, his crew come across evidence of the Kiint following
the exact same line of inquiry; they’re methods of electronic restoration is
identifiable, their concern about the Sleeping God known. Yet, in the three
giant leaps it takes to get to the conclusion, the Kiint are only implicated in
the first step. If they are so powerful and all-knowing, why could they not
take that one step further, like the measly humans did?
3. Quinn’s dark powers peak near the conclusion when
he tries to summon the fallen angels of his God’s Brother. The result of his invocation
startles him and startles the reader. There’s a crossover of plots regarding
Quinn and the invocation brings the two separate plot threads together in a
wholly unexpected and, to the reviewer, inexplicable way. Considering Quinn’s
prowess with connecting with the dark side or whatever, he ought to be capable
of tapping more greatly into the same realm… but what he invokes is way out of
right-field.
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I guess pleasure can be found
in the Night’s Dawn trilogy, not from the thoughtful prose or engrossing
storyline, but from the challenge. The challenge in reading the trilogy is to
keep all the storylines in your mind without having to refer to the character
list or flipping back to the preceding chapters. For me, it’s a bit too much (1)
military action, (2) galactic gallivanting, (3) whimsical fornication, (4) fantasy
of the soul, and (5) downplay on importance of alien intelligence.
Regardless, I always look forward to Hamilton's projects.
