Peter Hamilton: The Reality Dysfunction a reader's companion by jpoc.

What is this and what is it for?

As it says above, this is a reader's companion to Peter Hamilton's book "The Reality Dysfunction" which is part of his "Night's Dawn" trilogy.

The trilogy is made up of three massive books, each about one thousand pages long. The narrative takes place across the galaxy with many different intertwining plot lines and a huge cast of characters.

This companion is for the first of the three books in the series. It will be joined by similar works for the second two books

When I started to read the book, I had some big problems keeping track of things. Personal circumstances ment that I had to put it down for a few weeks and get on with something important and, when I picked it up, I realised that what I had worried about was coming to pass. I needed constantly to go back to earlier chapters to refresh my memory as to what had happened in some little earlier plot twist and this was taking me a lot of time.

I was frustrated because I felt that the book should come with some sort of reader's assistant to help with this problem. There was not one and I didn't find one on the net so, I decided that I would write one myself.

So, what follows is a chapter by chapter guide to the book with character notes and extensive backwards cross references. You should not read this companion ahead of your progress in the book. So, when you reach the beginning of that chapter, you might find it helpful to read the section on backward notes for that chapter if you need a refresher on what some of the characters have been up to. You should not read the notes about the chapter itself until you have finished it as that would contain a major set of spoilers for the chapter.

If you have the US editions of these books, you should take care to note that a book that was published as a single volume in the UK was issued in the US as two separate books with new titles. My notes are geared to the UK editions because those are the ones that I have.

Also, I reference back to both chapter and page numbers. I hope that the former will make sense whatever version you are reading. The page numbers may not be such a great guide to you if you have a printing that is different from mine.

OK, that is enough of an introduction, assuming that you have got started on the book, click the links below for the relevant chapter guides.