I’m not a huge Peter Hamilton fan. I’ve enjoyed some of his books, but they always seem like the editor lost the battle about trimming the book down. His latest doorstop, Great North Road, is my favorite type of book, a science fiction mystery book. But, since Peter Hamilton wrote it, we have an almost 1000 page book with a story that spreads over 20+ years and two cities on separate planets. It’s not a bad book, but it’s very slow in places and has storylines and whole chapters that could have been eliminated or severely chopped down without losing anything in the story.

Let’s start with the Norths. The patriarch, Kane North, starts a cloning program and has 3 successful cloned triplets, Augustine, Bartram and Constantine. The cloned children are the 2Norths (2nd Generation), if they have children, those are 3Norths while clones of the triplets are 2Norths. Due to genetic issues, the 2s are smarter and better than the 3s and everyone would be better than the 4s. The Norths opened up the gateway between Earth and a giant Earthlike planet (St. Libra) in the Sirius system. They setup biofuel factories and start making tons of money supplying fuel to Earth.

In the beginning of the story, we are 20 years after the slaughter of Bartram and almost everyone who was at his mansion. The sole survivor, Angela, has been in jail since then, even though she claims that she is innocent and a monster actually did the killing. She’s finally released from jail when a new murder happens with the same method of killing, only in Newcastle (on Earth). From here, we start on our parallel stories. On Earth we have the Newcastle police department (with lead investigator Sid Hurst) working the current murder case with the belief that there is inter-North family fighting that led to this murder with a gang component that cleverly cleaned up the mess. On St. Libra, Angela joins an expedition to find the monster.

The Newcastle storyline is the more interesting storyline. It has much better characters and a lot more going on. The St. Libra storyline only exists to explain Angela’s backstory (and how relates to the mystery) and show us St. Libra. The actual St. Libra has its own mystery. The entire ecology doesn’t seem to have actually evolved on St. Libra. There are no animals, insects or anything beyond the plant life. There is a belief that the monster is from St. Libra and just hasn’t been seen previously because the planet is so massive.

I would have enjoyed the book more if the St. Libra expedition was significantly reduced. It didn’t fit in with the murder mystery in Newcastle and the expedition didn’t really find anything significant until the end. It was a waste of space and storytelling. The Newcastle storyline was entertaining and interesting. Sid and his team were interesting, using advance science to help track things down while being constrained by the limitations of that science. For instance, there are smart cells throughout the city that can keep track of what happened in an area and allow replays of that action. But there are ways for criminals to disable the cells and open holes in the coverage area. Overall, it was an enjoyable book that would have been much better at two-thirds of the size. Recommended.