Some great and atmospheric writing, but the characters never develop enough and the story is weak, with unfinished threads, compared to Asher's normal page-turners. ( )

Neal Asher is always a good bet for space opera action, biological (often alien) oddities, and some seriously nasty body-horror elements. Sometimes all at the same time.

In this, we return to the remnants of the old Earth factions so far removed from the Polity and its AI masters that there needed to be a tentative inquiry into rejoining the human race. No, no, this isn't a novel about what is human. All these peeps are so far beyond what we consider human that neither side fits the bill. I mean, between a peep with a dual variant on the Spatterjay virus making him half-monster and half-immortal, extensive biological enhancements/alterations on all the old-time humans to live on this caustic worm-laden world, and all manner of uploading consciousness and vat-grown clones, what we really have here is a hard-SF tale distilled down to essentials...

Like loyalty, conscience, family, and stopping the damn civil war.

Didn't I mention? Yeah, this is a civil war novel. :)

Quite fun. :) ( )

great story ( )

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Hilldiggers
Series: Polity #10
Author: Neal Asher
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 564
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Back before the AI's took over the Polity in the Quiet War, a group of humans had left to follow their own dreams. Unfortunately, there was a violent split in the group and one group went to one world and the other group to the other world. Both performed lots and lots of gene-splicing and mucking about to stay alive on their respective planets. Once their civilizations reached a certain point they became aware of the other planet and war ensued. The war ended when one side used gravity weapons, the eponymous Hilldiggers, to totally wipe out the underground cities of the other.

The winning side had gotten a hold of an “Object” and learned a lot from it. They held this Object in various cylanders on a space station. A woman conceives at the moment that the object tries to get loose and 9 months later gives birth to quadruplets. These quads are the brightest humans on the planet and seem driven to succeed at whatever task they want.

The Polity has been monitoring this system for quite some time and is now sending in a Consul to see if the system would like to join the Polity. They send in an Old Captain, a man of Spatterjay who is more virus than man. But this man has a countervirus working in him as an experiment.

When one of the Quads leads a military coup, the Consul must navigate between 2 worlds, the Polity and the mysterious Object, which seems to have its own agenda.

In the end, the coup, which was instigated by the Object, fails but ends up freeing the Object, which continues its travels and recon. The 2 worlds make peace once it is realized the victorious world started the war for profit and both worlds decide to slowly look into entering the Polity.

My Thoughts:

Even though I read this back in 2011, I didn't remember anything besides the Object so this was like reading it ♪for the very♪ first♪ time♪. I have to say, I enjoyed this a lot and reading my review, I enjoyed it a lot more than last time.

I know last time I was convinced that the Object was the Dragon that we are introduced to in the Agent Cormac series. This time around, I'm not really sure and actually rather doubt it. It just didn't fit the description. It would be nice to know for sure one way or the other though.

There was a lot of fighting in this book and having an Old Captain, with a twist, made for a good character to represent the Polity. We also get viewpoints from each of the quadruplets and a Polity Drone. While Asher seems quite able to handle so many viewpoints and to tell one cohesive whole of a story through them, trying to summarize it all is a real pain in the butt.

I am trying to think WHY I enjoyed this so much more than last time. Part of it is that I've read enough of his newer books to realize that he's not going to be writing a Spatterjay trilogy ever again and so I don't expect his books to be that. I think that it didn't help that I simply gorged on these back in '11. I read 5 of his books within a month and that can really detract.

I was able to sit back, take in the various viewpoints and just let the story roll on. I have found that I've been doing that a lot more recently and it helps me to enjoy the book.Instead of trying to guess or predict, I just let the author guide me along. I don't try to fight the current of the book. I am The Tai-Chi Master of Book Reading, hahahahaa!

Another greatly enjoyable book by Asher in the Polity universe.

★★★★☆ ( )

My least favorite of the Polity novels so far. I just found the whole situation rather boring, to be honest. There wasn't enough AI humor, or awesome brutality of everything else, to really make me feel like I was reading a good Asher novel. ( )