The Salvation Sequence by Peter F. Hamilton

This will be a short review of a very long trilogy. 

Peter F. Hamilton is a British writer whose career is built on writing  long space operas. He often repeats the same motifs in varying forms; he has a thing about interstellar travel based on wormholes and portals. He's also very good at coming up with believable and nasty aliens (MorningLightMountain in the Commonwealth Saga is one of the best aliens in modern SF).

The Salvation Sequence consists of three novels: Salvation: A Novel, Salvation Lost, and Saints of Salvation. Like many of his other books, we have instant travel between stars and nasty aliens. I'm not going to get into describing the plot because I don't have all morning; instead, I'm going to shamelessly crib from Wikipedia.

Hamilton's Salvation sequence involves two concurrent story lines. One is set during the year 2204. In this period humanity has developed near-instantaneous space travel via a network of QSE (quantum-spatial entanglement) portals and are using them to begin spreading out into the galaxy. As a consequence of this technology, crewed spaceships are unnecessary. When an unknown vessel is found on a recently explored world, a team of specialists are sent out to investigate both the craft and the astonishing contents therein. The other story line is set much farther in the future. It follows a genetically engineered team of special forces designed to confront and destroy an enemy who are following their religious agenda of harvesting all sentient species in the galaxy.

It took me more than six months to work my way through the trilogy, which is over 1600 pages long. That's about eight standard novels, or what used to be a standard novel. I enjoyed quite a bit of it, but some of it was a real slog, and I found myself skimming a lot, especially in the last novel. Hamilton desperately needs to be edited heavily; I'd have cut the trilogy down to two books, at least.

Of all of Hamilton's works, I'd rate this somewhere in the middle after The Commonwealth Saga, The Reality Dysfunction, and Fallen Dragon. Recommended only for Hamilton fans.