This week I’m almost halfway through Peter F. Hamilton’s The Dreaming Void, part one of his “Void” trilogy, in which humanity discovers that what they thought was a black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy is, in fact, some sort of ancient, gigantic artifact that periodically wakes up and eats nearby stars. So of course, somebody decides they have to send a ship into it. Readers of Hamilton’s earlier “Commonwealth Sage”, in whose universe the “Void” trilogy is set, will remember how well it turned out the last time humans sent ships poking around such a construct. (Hint: Not well.) Like most of Hamilton’s books, this one is taking a nice long time to get going, but, also like most of Hamilton’s books, I expect that once the plot really kicks in, I won’t want to put it down.
The mighty creatures fly free amid glorious colored streamers that glow strongly against the infinite dark of the outer reaches. They loop around the great scarlet promontories that extend for light-years, curving and swooping above the mottled webbing of faint cold gas.
At the moment I have no idea what these mighty creatures are, but with that much gas around, I would say Tucker the Much Better Vizsla than Dennis had been in the area recently, except for the “faint” and “cold” part. We will find out! In the meantime, of course, here is this week’s excerpt from The War of the Ravels!
The distant bulwark made him uncomfortable, with its vast blankness pocked here and there by even darker vaulted openings that didn’t seem to be windows. They gave the impression of being empty niches, as if for carven figures that had gotten up and gone walking; given what Mercy had told him about what had happened to her in the crypt beneath Lord Korrin’s castle, the concept of prowling statuary carried a disturbing lack of impossibility.
Viscosity 