Manhattan in Reverse - Book Review


Manhattan in Reverse is a book of short stories by Peter F. Hamilton. I'm a big fan of his CommonWealth universe, as well as many of his other works (albeit he does have an habit of pulling Deux in Machina endings) and most of the stories are in the CommonWealth.

Watching Trees Grow - a murder mistery that takes hundreds of years to solve - was pretty good. It takes place in an universe where Rome never fell, and the Emperors turned from breeding gladiators to breeding for longevity (which I imagine is incredibly hard, given that whole generations will pass before you get any useful data about that coupling you made...).

I also can't help but imagine that without the whole Dark Ages thing, they would have much more than the few decades of technology advance suggested.

But overall, very good.

Footvote - a very nice story of what happens when you can generate wormholes and move the dissatisfied population in droves out of a country. The constitution items mixed with the story are particularly fun (as well as mostly a good idea).

If At First... is a clever time travel/parallel worlds story. Loved it.

The Forever Kitten - is just cute and short, but not memorable at all.

Blessed by an Angel - nice commonwealth story about how Higher culture tries to spread by force. Nice surprise ending.

The Demon Trap - very nice Paula Myo story. Couldn't help but find the ending not very satisfying...

Manhattan in Reverse - very nice Paula Myo story - although I can't help but feel that she was unnecessary to the story and was added to make it more likely for the fans to buy the book. Still, nice ending.

Overall, very much recommended for Hamilton fans. Other SF fans might enjoy it, but I'd rather recommend his various book series.

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