The Great North Road

The Great North Road is a science fiction novel by Peter F. Hamilton.  This behemoth of a novel (more than 900 pages) is intricately and fabulously plotted.  I never really cared for the characters (I even found more than one of them downright obnoxious) but I never stopped reading the book because the events depicted kept me intrigued & drew me on.  Basically the story involves the near future (events are depicted 110-130 years up) and includes a possible serial killer, a possible avenging alien, catastrophes on more then one world, military expeditions, and the future of the human race in the universe.  All the myriad storylines are masterfully pulled together in the eventual resolution.

All in all, I would definitely recommend this book.  I guess one benefit to not really liking the characters is that it doesn’t matter as much (and in some cases is even appreciated) when bad things happen to them.