Infinity Engine

Oh my god. Or, I should say, Penny Royal. :)

I've been steadily raving about Asher's novels more and more because they just keep getting BETTER and BETTER. This Transformation trilogy has got to be my absolute favorite.

Actually, the whole weaving of all these threads from book one to the end was so thoroughly SATISFYING that I may just start raving about it to non-specialized high-tech space-opera fans and just start pulling in normal SF fans to point and say... "Just look at this trilogy, skip the rest, just read this and MARVEL at the juicy characters, epic events, and thoroughly F***ed-up poison chalice wish-granting going on here.

Get your wishes granted! But Penny Royal, the mad AI that almost all of the Polity AIs fear, and rightly show more so, thinks on a VERY twisted path. The second novel was fantastic for giving us the AI's history, but the third novel gets the Mad AI Factory back online in a big way and EVERYONE is out to put an END to it. And Penny Royal.

And if that wasn't enough, the whole twisted story of Penny Royal creating many teams of creatively uber-powerful peeps of all walks and races JUST to murder the hell out of him because he's JUST TOO POWERFUL and suffers HUGE guilt for the things that broke his mind... well... I can't think of a better or more satisfying end to this trilogy than what we got.

Brilliant! I'm dancing about here in utter glee! :) show less

By the end of the middle book in this trilogy I was having some doubts about this whole enterprise and whether Asher would pull it all together in a satisfying manner. This is between how Penny Royal's effortless manipulations of events were stretching my suspension of disbelief, Thorvald Spear's growing doubts about his whole mission in pursuing the AI being and the apparent demise of the Prador father-captains whose fight drove much of the plot up till that point. At the end of the day Asher does pull it all together though, even if the increasing emphasis on the character The Brockle feels like some sort of reverse deus ex machina deployed to keep the plot machinery going. The main point is that Spear does work though his emotional show more and philosophical issues in a convincing fashion so that when the climax of the book is reached the pay-off feels like it's been earned. I'll admit that I wish that the people who react viscerally to Asher's politics (a no-nonsense Libertarianism) could offer an informed critique vis-a-vis the man's fiction but this trilogy can be read as a tract against a certain ends-justify-the-means mentality; even if one is truly caught in such a position of existential survival the moral and psychological costs are high and Asher does seem to be trying to deal honestly with the with the implications of the universe he's created. Certainly some of main characters, human and AI alike, are calling BS on the direction of the Polity before it's all over. show less

I really enjoy Neal Asher''s expansive, imaginative novels. This one has a particularly clever twist on the often popular notion that we are living in a computer simulation. Also lots of explosions, super science, and action, as well redemption for most of the main figures.

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Title: The Infinity Engine
Series: Polity: Transformation #3
Author: Neal Asher
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 575
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

The End Game is in sight. Penny Royal, that black AI that nobody can seem to predict, control or even understand, continues to move the players like chess pieces.

Prador and Humanity move together as the Atheter makes it clear that it won't be kept on Masada. The Brockle is convinced that it is destined show more to take Penny Royal's place. There are a lot of players, a lot of threads and Penny Royal weaves them altogether with a Black Hole.

And pretty much becomes a god and watches the end of the universe and it's beginning and it tries to figure out how to stop the loop.

My Thoughts:

I thought this was the best of the trilogy. With various threads coming together, it is easier to understand what is actually going on. And the ending is the wry humor I expect from Asher.

The one thing I didn't care for was Asher's continued needling of religion. In several cases anyone who is religious is compared to a mentally ill person who obviously can't think straight. I've also realized that Asher always makes any Separatists idiotic douchebags just to show how awesome it is to always bow to a greater central authority. I spit on that. He continually makes his point [with battle axe bluntness sometimes] about how powerful the Polity AI's are and how much the humans really NEED them to run things. But this whole trilogy was about how poorly the AI's DO handle things. They are not omniscient, all powerful beings. They're just as flawed as their creators and even “self” improvement leads to problems half the time. So Asher pretty much argues against the case he makes in the first place. So phrack Central Authority. It's called Responsibility.

The character that I liked the most this time around was Sverl, the prador turned AI with a golem body. How weird is that? But Sverl does a fantastic job of showing multiple points of view from one character, as he has aspects of Prador, AI and humanity, all rolled into one. I don't know what it is, but something about him just appealed to me.

I think that for whatever Asher writes next, I am going to wait to read the whole thing instead of reading them as they come out. There was too much going on for me to remember everything from book to book and I know that lessened my overall enjoyment.

★★★★☆ show less

the last book in the Transformation Trilogy, and a pivotal book in the Polity Universe. the AIs gather, the various races drift in, technology makes enormous leaps, and the universe is at stake. there's a great sense of urgency to the story, and it turns out to be oddly uplifting; his universe is darker, but it reaches here to a sense of big-picture (and it's a very big picture) optimism, about the AIs and what they opt to take from and make of the human race. great end sequence, with a terrific last line.

A complex, multi-threaded story culminating in a just-fathomable ending involving black holes, infinity and, perhaps, God... Slightly too complex for me, may improve with a second reading.

Pulls in all the threads from the previous two books and deftly ties them all together. A fantastic finale. Highly recommended: just make sure to read the entire trilogy back-to-back, there's so much going on here.