Review of Salvation by Peter F. Hamilton

It has been a long time since I read a Peter F. Hamilton novel, but I feel confident in saying Salvation is very Peter F. Hamilton, if you know what I mean. Fifteen years ago, a younger Kara was captivated by Pandora’s Star. Salvation feels like a reskinned version: wormholes and portals, a mysterious alien enemy, murder mysteries. This time around, I’m older and more cynical and want more characterization than Hamilton can give me. But it was still a lot of fun.

There are too many characters for me to summarize here. Suffice it to say, Salvation has a very intricate structure. It has a frame story taking place in 2204, with an expedition to a crashed alien ship and the security of Earth on the line. This frame story is an excuse to tell a series of vignettes involving murders and other investigations stretching back almost a hundred years. Meanwhile, there are chapters set hundreds of years in the future, when an enemy has destroyed Earth and hunts humanity across the stars, and the children of humanity train to fight in this stealth war.

Each individual mystery is set in a slightly different slice of society, and I appreciated the glimpses we get into this world warped by portal travel. The individual mysteries are each intriguing, and together they create a kind of Canterbury Tales atmosphere; these chapters could have been standalone novelettes. Hamilton hasn’t lost any of his ability to extrapolate how a single technology might completely alter our world, and in this universe, it’s portals.

Initially, it isn’t clear how the chapters set in the far future are connected to the rest of the story. I enjoyed the careful way Hamilton constructs the linking exposition gradually over the course of the book. There’s plenty of foreshadowing and hints to allow the reader to puzzle it out as you go.

Hamilton also does some things with gender that are alternatively interesting and frustrating. The idea of omnia is an intriguing but very limited idea of genderfluidity. And while many of the women in the book are capable badasses, Hamilton seems mired in a biologically essentialist view of gender. This is true too for the far-future chapters where the main characters are young boys and girls being raised Ender’s Game–style for war … the whole “lol boys be strong and aggro and girls be smart and measured.” People can, in some circumstances, alter their biology in a way that affects their gender, but there is little exploration of the cultural, social aspects of gender identity.

All in all, Salvation is a beautifully realized world with some very intriguing storytelling. Though its limits are, I think, quite overt and on display, it was still a really enjoyable read.