Line War

Payoff. :)

That's what this novel is.

After so many novels, including short stories and asides like Brass Man, this novel combines everyone, all the good and the bad, together in a spectacular blow out of AI ships against each other, with Jain tech making a mess of envy and call to power across so many species, and the people in the Polity and outside of it (a gigantic Jain sphere of awesome tech, Dragon) included.

War. Big war. With even bigger tech and hidden programs, nasty old and new AIs, leftovers of the Prador war, agents of Earth Central, and even the leftovers of ancient aliens who lobotomized themselves to become invisible to the Jain menace. :)

Is it satisfying? Is it over-the-top big action and tech and explosions and even a show more Lovecraftian element of horror throughout the massive augments? Hell yeah. :)

I'm not done with this author in the slightest. I'm only getting started, even if Agent Cormac is done (so far). :) show less

Pure unadulterated tosh but great stuff. It’s the final title in a series and it’s all strange aliens, the machinations of superbrain Ais, overendowed golems, half machine humans and aggressive but chippy war androids. The plot is ludicrous and the ending utterly preposterous but it charges along at a frenetic rate across the galaxy with massive mind-numbing battles and catastrophes. The hero fights his way from hither to yon, the heroine endures all (though not especially for him). Stuff to while away an idle hour when your brain is less than half engaged.

The Polity is a human based government that spans a large portion of the Galaxy. The AI’s have fairly bloodlessly taken over and in general do a much better job than humans ever did. They appear to be mostly a benevolent oligarchy for most of humanity, shepherds really guiding and protecting their simple charges from their own stupidity. But sometimes things aren't always what they seem.

A new threat is coming at the Polity and it was one of their own. A rogue AI left the Polity and brought many volunteers, and some who weren't with it. It integrated itself with some alien technology and all the other AI’s and renamed himself Erebus. The technology he used has been around for eons, slowly destroying each civilization it comes into show more contact with.

Now humans and their rulers have it as an enemy. Erebus is attacking the Polity and the AI’s don’t seem to be doing much to out guess him. As a matter of fact they seem to be only reacting to his moves. This turns out to be a major problem that almost cost the everyone in the Polity much more than they would ever know.

This book brought back quite a few of the ‘heroes’ from the previous books, I recognized several from the one book I read previously. Way too much history that is important to start with this one. The rest I’m sure I’ll get to know as I catch up with the rest of the series. I would say this is hard space opera, with a bit of James Bond thrown in for spice. If that sounds like your cup of tea, pick up the first book and start reading! Plenty of action mixed in with all the technology speak and philosophy going on. show less

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Title: Line War
Series: Polity: Agent Cormac #5
Author: Neal Asher
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 580
Format: Digital Edition



Synopsis:

Erebus, the rogue AI that has been corrupted by Jain nodes, is on the path to destroying the solar system. With fake attacks and whatnot, he manages to clear the way to Earth itself. Standing in his way is the haiman who committed murder for a jain node and Ian Cormac.
Cormac has been running all over the show more Polity, ostensibly chasing down Erebus but in reality picking up clues that lead him to only one conclusion. ECS, the Head Honcho AI, colluded with Erebus right when Erebus first found jain nodes. Its justification was that humanity was stagnating,but with millions and possibly billions dead, Cormac puts the smack down on that particular AI and kills it. A submind takes over but with the spectre of Cormac haunting it should it ever decide to go so outside of bounds.
The Dragon Sphere takes Mika and allows her access to Jain AI, which in turn allows her to deal with the gabbleduck/Atheter AI, possibly.



My Thoughts:

Nothing from my original review from 2010 has changed. This was a particularly wordy story and there were a lot of details that just didn't need to be there. It really bogged the story down. Instead of an adrenaline filled gorefest of robots and monsters I got an indepth tour of things I didn't care one whit about. That's why I knocked half a star off this time.

There is still a lot of action but sometimes it felt like it was really hidden away. Also, Cormac played a MUCH smaller part. The biggest thing he did was at the end when he killed ECS. I guess this just didn't stand up to a re-read as well as some of the previous books. The ideas were really cool the first time around and covered up all the weak points. This time around, I was seeing the weakpoints.

I had forgotten that the Atheter memcrystal came into play so early in the Polity books. I just read a big part of it's conclusion in the Polity: Transformation trilogy last year. That is one nice thing about re-reads, seeing various threads that you'd forgotten about being more deeply woven into the story.

I do wonder if we'll ever see Agent Cormac again. He hasn't shown up, that I'm aware of, in later Polity books. But if we don't, I'm completely satisfied with how this 5 books sub-series ended.

★★★☆ ½ show less

Over prosaic. Too wordy.

But other than that, the over arching plot I found fantastic. Love the idea of Cormac being the bogeyman now. Somebody needs to watch over EC [ie, Skynet] and keep it honest ;-)

A perfect culmination to the five book story arc. Everything was explained very satisfactorily, through a gripping, multi-layered story.

Fantastic in every sense of the word. These books have left me feeling overloaded with characters/plots and creatures but I have to say I have enjoyed reading them. Look forward to more of them.