The Voyage of the Sable Keech (2006)

This is read Neal Asher books out of sequence week it seems.

From what I gather reading this, and the list of titles at the start, this book is a sequel or follow-on of sorts from The Skinner.

It is also set in his Polity future history.

There is a list of his titles, centred, in the middle of a blank page, and that is it. No indication of order or series or whether any are collections, or anything like that.

Very poor on the part of the publisher, some obvious advertising to be done there, and a waste of space and opportunity.

That said, the book is an amusing black humoured mostly planet bound space opera of sorts.

The planet in question has a bizarre ecology, where a leech born virus makes everything long lived and hard to kill, which leaves a particularly ultradeadly poison that is also native to the planet highly sought after, and also an important part of the ecosystem.

It isn't just animals this affects, but people - some of whom are thousands of years old.

The Sable Keech is a ship named after someone who appears to have been an important character in the previous book.

An alien in a sunken ship with a secret, a flying weird form golem with a secret, another golem with a secret, a passenger on one of the privateer ships with a secret, a revivified charter passenger with a nasty secret.

In fact, secrets everywhere, along with voracious wildlife, a couple of smart, and smartarse drones and an AI all finally come to a violent head.

This is Neal Asher after all, who is defiintely of the plain-speaking and blow stuff up school of SF in general, but with weird monsters added.

I liked this one more than Brass Man, certainly made me chuckle in places.

A one line throwaway could be 'pirate adventure with monsters, robotos and spaceships'.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2008/02/voyage-of-sable-keech-neal-asher.html ( )

Good plot. Lots happening. Lots of surprises. Well developed characters. Links well with previous books. ( )

Very much a follow up to Skinner, this book is set some time after. There's a cult around Sable Keech who managed to be resurrected on Spatterjay, and various reifs want to replicate that (hence the title, they name the boat after him). All the former elements are there and developed, plus there's a wonderful new beat in the shape of a pissed off whelk.

Prador, thralls and all, squabbling AIs the works. So, why only 3.5 stars? Although the changes were well worked and most of the story lines interesting to fascinating, there were places where it felt like you were being told the story lest you forget they were an element of the overall mix, and that pulled it down. I don't mind good author's tricks, but I don't like noticing them whilst I'm reading the book! ( )

Asher returns to the world of Spatterjay in this sequal to 'The Skinner', but apart from making a few quid, I don't know why. I'm a big fan of Neal Asher, but I have to admit I was a bit dissapointed by this effort.

I think the reason I couldn't really enjoy this novel is twofold, firstly, it is rather similar to the previous book set on Spatterjay, and second, I really couldn't get into the driving character, walking deadman Taylor Bloc.

Asher still does some things brilliantly though, his never sated wildlife creations are fantastic, from the hammer whelks, the whirling prill and the humungous whelkus titanicus, this novel crawls with a multitude of hugely dangerous beasties. And as if the various forms of hungry death available on Spatterjay were not enough, someone has managed to import another of Asher's monstrous creations, a Hooder, onto the planet, let the blood and mayhem begin then.

For me, the sequences with Spatterjays biofauna worked better than the plot itself, which picks up al the threads seen in the first book, Sniper gets a bigger drone body, dead people seek resurrection, Prador kill everything that crosses their alien path, Old Captains do, well, pretty much whatever they want to, who could stop them ?

I loved the elongated chase sequence as the giant whelk seeks revenge for it's consumed brood, but Taylor Bloc's search for truth and viral rebirth wasn't as compelling.

This is still a fair sf novel, but check out 'The Skinner', 'Gridlinked' and 'Line Of Polity' to read Asher at his best. ( )