Salvation Lost by Peter F. Hamilton

Published by Del Rey on October 29, 2019

Salvation Lost is the second novel of the Salvation trilogy. Readers who have not read the first novel (Salvation) are cautioned that this review makes references to that novel that might be regarded as spoilers.

At the end of Salvation, I expected the direction of the trilogy to change. The novel’s “present” is set about 200 years in the future. Things are looking bleak for Earth as humans come to realize that aliens known as the Olyix are not the benevolent benefactors they seem to be, but are intent on capturing the entire human race, reducing individuals to a bodiless essence and storing them in cocoons (“a bulbous barrel of flesh with a distended head protruding at the top”) to further what seems to be (from the Olyix perspective) a divine mission. This is what happens when people (or aliens) think they are doing the work of God. Another Salvation storyline is set in the far future, focusing on the descendants of humans who fled Earth and its colonies. These future humans are plotting and training to battle the Olyix, as have generations before them. I expected the second novel to focus on the characters in the far future, but quite a bit of the novel engages the reader with familiar characters from the present, who are fighting in Earth’s end days to give the human race a chance to survive. I was happy about that because I felt a stronger attachment to the characters in the present than to those in the future.

Much of the future story deals with the crew of a starship, including characters who will be familiar to readers of Salvation. They have created what they believe will be a trap for the Olyix, with a goal of capturing one of their ships and pinpointing the location of their home base. Their larger plan is to take the war to the Olyix. The problem is that the Olyix have been around a long time and this is all “been there, done that” to them.

Much of the present story deals with efforts to thwart the Olyix as they try to snatch every human. The humans hope to slow the Olyix enough to allow substantial numbers of humans to flee — and to prepare them to keep fleeing, generation after generation, until humans ae in a position to take it to the Olyix. Peter Hamilton provides greater depth of characterization in the second novel than he did in Salvation, as we take a close look at conflicted members of a powerful family who face the prospect of losing all the wealth they’ve created.

To the story in the present, Salvation Lost adds some lowlifes who find themselves well paid to commit acts of vandalism for reasons they don’t fully understand. An entity that calls itself that watcher joins the story of the future. Hamilton eventually reveals the reason the lowlifes are being exploited and the nature of the watcher. Both revelations impart interesting twists to the plot.

The best part of Salvation, I thought, was the detailed future-building: the economic and social structures that evolve around unlimited energy, instantaneous transportation, and food printing. Salvation Lost takes that all as a given and delivers a meatier plot than the first novel. Both the past and future elements of the plot are exciting and fast-moving. Both contain surprises that spin the story in new directions.

Some of the novel’s themes are drawn from decades of science fiction, including human ingenuity and the value of self-sacrifice. While the themes are familiar, Hamilton’s imaginative use of future technology makes them seem fresh. Hamilton advances a story that rises above a typical “humans versus aliens” space opera, simply because the detailed universes in which the plots unfold are so convincing. Salvation Lost is a much stronger novel that the space-filling middle installment that so often bridges the first and last novels of a sf trilogy.

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