I finished the Commonwealth duology,
Pandora's Star and
Judas Unchained, by Peter F. Hamilton a few days ago, much earlier than I had expected, considering both books add up to well over 2000 pages. But it was such an exiting read I really ploughed through it.
It's hard to sum something so large up in a few words. There were things I didn't like and things I loved. Hamilton paints a very detailed picture of this future universe and populates it with a lot of interesting characters. The future is very weird in some places and very much like our own time in others. I really liked how today's web communication evolved to those e-butler implants people were using in the books.
I really appreciated how everything came together in the end and how the stuff in the first book that sometimes seemed to be unconnected or unimportant turned out to be important to the overall plot. It reminds me of the film
La Dolce Vita by Fellini in a way, where every scene turn out to have meaning, even though it doesn't seem like it at first glance. I hear there's an even bigger trilogy set in the same universe 1200 years later. I'm definetely going to check that out someday.
After that I read the new Trek novel
Zero Sum Game. It was good, though not great. I loved the insight we get into Breen society and the concept of a masked society. It also explains the divergent factoids about the Breen in canon nicely. The secret ops plot stretched plausibility a few times, in my opinion, but it was an exciting read. The last scene is just awesome.
I'm out of new books to read, more or less. I do have books I haven't read, yet, but I don't feel like reading them. I read something about
Der Tod in Venedig (Death in Venice) by Thomas Mann and felt the urge to reread it so I might just do that. After that, who knows? Maybe I'll finally tackle the few stories by him I haven't yet read. It'll be a bit sad, though. He's my favourite author and there's something sad about having read everything with no hope of any new output. There's still
Joseph und Seine Brüder (Joseph and his Brothers), which I'm saving for a prolonged stay on a deserted island.
.
). Often I'm reading several books concurrently, to wit, KRAD's excellent the Brave and the bold duology, Catalyst of Sorrows the Lost Era novel and rereading Beneath the Raptors wing. 
