A Night Without Stars

Executive Summary: A bit of a slow start, but probably my favorite Commonwealth books since [b:Pandora's Star 45252 Pandora's Star Peter F. Hamilton https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1440699949s/45252.jpg 987015].Audiobook: John Lee does his usual quality job. He doesn't do a lot of voices, but his normal reading voice is fantastic.Full ReviewI struggled a bit with the first third or so of [b:The Abyss Beyond Dreams 20697413 The Abyss Beyond Dreams Peter F. Hamilton https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1394973682s/20697413.jpg 40016910]. Once things got moving they most got pretty good, but there were still lulls. This book however had very few lulls.I originally felt like Abyss kind of abruptly ended, but given how this book starts out, I think the split makes more sense. This book focuses heavily on three entirely new characters: Captain Chiang whose a member of the military responsible for rooting out Fallers, a forest warden named Florian and astronaut Ry Evine.I struggled a lot with Chiang's character, which I think was by intent. He's not inherently evil, but he tends to be a bit too determined to stop the fallers at any cost. Florian on the other hand was fantastic. It was largely his part of the story that sucked me into this book. Ry Evine was interesting enough but his story felt much smaller compared with the other two.Much like all of the other Commonwealth books, the story is full of cool tech (albeit much less than some of the others dues to reasons that explained in the book), memorable characters and huge stakes.There are some other aspects of this book I really enjoyed, but talking about those would get into spoiler territory, something I try to avoid when writing reviews.If you liked previous Commonwealth books, or if you were so-so on the last book and haven't picked this one up yet, I think it was well worth it.I really enjoyed this book and I was especially happy with how he wrapped everything up a the end. I don't need another Commonwealth, but I'd easily read another one if he writes it. The world building is so big that it feels like there are plenty of stories that could be told.