Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton (4.7🌟)

Judas Unchained is the second book in the Commonwealth Saga. See my post on the first book Pandora's Star.

So much happens in this book (actually in both books) it will take me days to digest. However it was a great conclusion to the story and a great read. Not much to comment but to recommend this saga to any Science Fiction fan. It was worth the 4 weeks it took me to read the two books.

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (4🌟)

A psychological rollercoaster or a ghost story, or both? A young governess notices two people wandering around the house where she works. However when she asks, she is told that the people she is describing are dead. To find out the truth she investigates the history of the house and the owner. She asks questions. The children she looks after say they don't see anyone, but she thinks they are lying. No one else in the house can see them. Are the visitations "real ghosts" or is the governess going mad?

No matter how much she wants to help, with every turn of the screw, the crisis worsens.

Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton (4.8🌟)

This a is well written, gripping story. Three hundred years in the future, humanity has colonised over 400 hundred planets. This was possible due to the invention of wormhole technologies which allow people to travel through space without spaceships. Wormholes also allow faster, almost instant communication between planet's light years away. Humanity is enjoying immortality with rejuvenation treatments which reverse the ageing process, and re-life procedures ( resucitation!) in which digital copies of people consciousness and memories are uploaded into new bodies made with DNA information.

Anyway this is only a snippet of this universe created by Hamilton. The action kicks with the discovery of what seem to be Dyson Spheres enclosing two solar systems. A decision is made to travel more than one thousand light years to investigate them. Political, economic and scientific struggle arise from this decision, but the focus of the story is set on answering a couple of questions. What kind of civilisation could have the technology to build a dyson sphere? And why would they do that?