The Dreaming Void

The Dreaming Void is the first book in Peter Hamilton’s Void science fiction trilogy, set in a far future where various species are at different stages of development. Some of the races are trying to travel into the titular Void, a mysterious micro-universe that slowly expands in all directions.

I found it really hard to initially get into the story, as Hamilton spends large swaths of the early chapters describing worlds and scenery that are (or at least at that point, seem) completely irrelevant to the plot. At about a third of the way through this book, things became more interesting for me - but even in the last half I found myself skimming the more verbose sections.

The story is interesting and the characters are entertaining if somewhat two-dimensional at times. It’s not clear how the separate character arcs fit together though, which I’d somewhat hoped for by the end of the book. I doubt I’ll read the other books in the trilogy, which makes the whole experience a bit dissatisfying as this first book pretty much seems just a setup for the rest.