The Evolutionary Void is the third in Peter F. Hamilton’s Void series. The series takes place few hundred years after the events of Pandora’s Star/Judas Unchained. In it, the Greater Commonwealth — an expansive human civilization that’s spread through much of the galaxy — and its Artificial Intelligence allies find themselves attempting to deal with a faction of humanity hellbent on evolving the species into “post-physical existence” … whether the rest of us want it or not. The key to their plan is the Void, an pocket universe at the center of the Milky Way galaxy where the rules of reality can be bent by the power of one’s mind. The only problem is that the Void is expanding … and it’s consuming our galaxy as it does so.
I’ve read the first two books in this series and enjoyed them, though they aren’t nearly as thrilling as the Pandora’s Star novels. Since I read the last two in paperback, I decided to use the third novel to experiment with reading a book on the iPad. I purchased it using Amazon’s Kindle app, and so far I’m finding it an easy read. The backlighting on the pages takes a little getting used to. I’ve been reading a lot of PDFs on the iPad, most of which have color or subdued backgrounds, so the flat white of the Kindle app’s pages really stood out once I started reading the book. Turning down the brightness — which is easy to do with the new iOS 4.2 release — helped considerably.
To dim the brightness on your iPad running iOS 4.2:
- Double click the home button.
- Slide the multitask bar to the left.
- Adjust the brightness slider on the left-hand side to your comfort level.