Neal Asher

So, another novel that I really should have read five or six years ago, as Asher returns to the "Monty Python on crystal meth" world of Spatterjay, featuring a whole raft of POV characters; most of whom are coping with personal issues of major existential import. Nominally most important is one Taylor Bloc, one of Asher's take on the concept of a zombie, who has a clever scheme to revivify himself in the same fashion as Sable Keech, and who now reads as a satirical composite take on our own show more class of wannabe overlord "tech bro" entrepreneurs. His agenda is nominally driving the plot; at least Bloc thinks so.

This is as opposed to the Prador Vrell, another survivor of the first book, and whose agenda is simply to get off the damn planet before it kills him. This exercise in competency porn, Prador-style, will not be as easy as it looks. As for myself, I can always make time to read Asher's chronicle of the ghastly shenanigans of the Prador species.

Responding to other reviewers of this novel, yes, it is a bit bloated, as one would expect with more than half a dozen POV characters, but Asher was really coming into his own in this book in terms of his ability to build an intricate plot machine that blows up real good. I will not be taking the better part of a generation to get to the third book in this set. show less

Asher, Neal. Shadow of the Scorpion. Polity Universe No. 2 (Chronological). Tor, 2008.
Here’s how I think it must have gone down. Neal Asher is reading Ian M. Banks’s Culture series in the 1990s and thinks, “That’s cool. I bet I could one-up that.” And maybe he did. In Asher’s Polity Universe there are more AIs in more kinds of machines, more humans, posthumans and aliens, more strange locales, badass beasts, selfish-gene viruses, and more biotech of all kinds. As of April 2020, show more the series has grown to 17 novels in several different subseries. By 2008, Asher concluded that the Agent Cormac series needed a prequel—Shadow of the Scorpion—that delves into the childhood of Earth Central Security’s super soldier, Agent Ian Cormac (the name has to be an homage). He finds that, because he was traumatized by war as a child, his memories were selectively deleted. It is a neat treatment for post-traumatic stress if you can make it work. But is it a good idea? If you want the trauma back, can the memories be retrieved? How should you feel about the people who did the editing? Which way has more survival value? Eventually, Cormac will have to find out. show less

FREAKING THRILLING.

But I have one caveat: Anyone reading Neal Asher needs to treat this one like the start of huge Endgame scenario with a full catalog of books having built-up to a huge crescendo. :)

The full importance of everything going on builds on all the enormous happenings from before, from the entity now known as Angel, so many AIs that have had big parts in previous novels, the entirety of Jain technology in all its forms (including Spatterjay), and the Prador. And then I'm still show more missing a few key players like Orlandine, Dragon, and The Client. :)

Never mind the old tech of U-Space missiles. The Jain is awake and the Librarian is ACTIVE. One little soldier from 5 million years ago is more than enough to take down the entire freaking Polity. And when you start realizing that a gun that fires BLACK HOLES is still too-little, too late to turn the tide, you know you're in DEEP S**T.

These are some HUGE events and I have to admit I'm freaked out. Most Space Opera can't come near this. At all.

Asher does High-High Tech like few others. I LOVE the feeling of true dread. If planetary AIs are running scared, you know you've hit on something big. :) show less

Impressively, Neal Asher has managed to up both the quantity as well as quality of the violence in this second installment to his near-future dystopian ‘Owner’ trilogy. Like a hydra, the ruthless ‘Committee’ of Earth’s rulers, quickly sprouts new leadership in the wake of anti-hero Alan Saul’s one-man revolution in ’The Departure’. Chief among these is Serene Galahad, whose Committee bloodletting efficiently secures her role as supreme ruler of Earth. For a genocidal tyrant, show more this character is surprisingly understandable in Asher’s hands. His first person segments taken from her POV connect the dots of her atrocities believably, while illustrating the progression of her stomach for violence. In order to level the playing field and restore dramatic parity, Asher contrives to incapacitate and diminish Saul’s abilities, which also allows some of his satellite characters to step out from his shadow a bit. Three or four other narratives alternate with these, and all of them overflow with yet more gruesome death. Delightfully, adolescent wish fulfillment comes via some new techno-tricks Saul has learned, and almost everyone gets their comeuppance, although enough loose threads remain to provide ample material for a third installment. show less