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3.93 AVERAGE
3.93 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Oof, it took me a long time to get through this book. Asher accomplished some amazing world-building and a cast of intriguing characters. The gaps for me however were that this book was primarily plot-driven and the dialogue mostly felt like it was there to drive the plot forward. After a great start introducing some of the [what felt like 80] characters and the world, the middle slogged for me. By the end I wanted a deeper dive into and relationship building between the main/secondary/tertiary characters. (Really, the secondary/tertiary characters interested me the most, Windcheater and the AI like Sniper are the best.) I just feel like a great opportunity was missed. If you like sci-fi in a really unique setting that is plot-driven and features a large cast, this could be for you.
adventurous
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Asher, Neal. The Skinner. Spatterjay No. 1. 2002. Tor, 2005.
Neal Asher’s Polity universe has many mansions. It is a large, but still growing, interstellar post-scarcity culture that resembles nothing so much as Iain M. Banks’ Culture, but without the cute names for starships. But the polity isn’t everywhere. On its edges are some very strange and violent places. Spatterjay is a water planet partially quarantined by the polity Warden AIs. There is a domed island base where polity citizens come and go, but Spatterjay is also home to some very nasty predators. It is the kind of place where you might be tempted to go fishing with a railgun. Their food chain also houses a virus that makes the prey hard to kill. So, unless you are completely eaten, you are likely to survive, but you may be more like the thing that ate you than the person you used to be. Polity scientists suspect this virtual immortality virus may be a trojan they don’t want in their ecology. Into this mix come some humans and former humans who have different agendas. These include an agent carrying the consciousness of a hornet hive mind, a scientist looking for his lost love, and a centuries-old police monitor, whose body is kept animate by the local virus and Polity nanotech; virus and nanotech don’t have the same goals in mind. Add to that some human and alien villains and you have the makings for a high-tech outdoor adventure with intriguing characters. On the downside, the novel has a lot of minor characters, and I tend to lose track of some of them and have to scratch my head when they reappear. On the whole, however, it is quite a fish story, in fact, the best science fiction fish story since Roger Zelazny’s early ‘70s story “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth.” I recommend both.
Neal Asher’s Polity universe has many mansions. It is a large, but still growing, interstellar post-scarcity culture that resembles nothing so much as Iain M. Banks’ Culture, but without the cute names for starships. But the polity isn’t everywhere. On its edges are some very strange and violent places. Spatterjay is a water planet partially quarantined by the polity Warden AIs. There is a domed island base where polity citizens come and go, but Spatterjay is also home to some very nasty predators. It is the kind of place where you might be tempted to go fishing with a railgun. Their food chain also houses a virus that makes the prey hard to kill. So, unless you are completely eaten, you are likely to survive, but you may be more like the thing that ate you than the person you used to be. Polity scientists suspect this virtual immortality virus may be a trojan they don’t want in their ecology. Into this mix come some humans and former humans who have different agendas. These include an agent carrying the consciousness of a hornet hive mind, a scientist looking for his lost love, and a centuries-old police monitor, whose body is kept animate by the local virus and Polity nanotech; virus and nanotech don’t have the same goals in mind. Add to that some human and alien villains and you have the makings for a high-tech outdoor adventure with intriguing characters. On the downside, the novel has a lot of minor characters, and I tend to lose track of some of them and have to scratch my head when they reappear. On the whole, however, it is quite a fish story, in fact, the best science fiction fish story since Roger Zelazny’s early ‘70s story “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth.” I recommend both.
I was so excited about this book. Sailors! Viruses! Sea creatures! Oh my... A Caroline bonanza book. And for the first few chapters, it totally delivers. Wacky characters strengthened by viruses sail across salty, windy seas with alien creatures trying to take chunks out of them. Sea creatures wriggle and writhe and swim their way through in the oddest of ways. It's wonderful.
And then I seriously think someone took Asher aside and shook him by the shoulders, yelling at him, "Get down to business! What's all this funny nonsense?! Advance the plot... and you have 2 weeks to finish."
At least, that's how it feels when you're reading. All the lovely lush, sciencey description and character hooks vanish into a swarm of plot devices that rapidly rearrange the pieces (that used to be characters) and toss them into coordinated action. It's a neat juggling act. But totally jarring, and disappointing.
And then I seriously think someone took Asher aside and shook him by the shoulders, yelling at him, "Get down to business! What's all this funny nonsense?! Advance the plot... and you have 2 weeks to finish."
At least, that's how it feels when you're reading. All the lovely lush, sciencey description and character hooks vanish into a swarm of plot devices that rapidly rearrange the pieces (that used to be characters) and toss them into coordinated action. It's a neat juggling act. But totally jarring, and disappointing.
Never a dull moment in this wicked fun tale. The story is sort of mix of Dune, Moby Dick, Star Wars, and The Thing. The action takes place on the dangerous planet of Spatterjay. With the exception of a few islands and tiny atolls, Spatterjay is mostly a vast ocean teeming with very hungry, very aggressive wildlife. One of the most common life forms on Spatterjay are the leeches. The leeches are anywhere from finger-sized to elephant-sized things who want to eat anything and everything. If you spend longer than a few seconds in the water you're going to have some chomping on you. (Spatterjay doesn't do well as a vacation destination.) To get bitten by a leech is to become infected with a virus. One of the side-effects of this virus is near immortality. And wounds seems to heal extremely quickly. But if you're then not too careful about your diet you'll find yourself slowly turning into a leech. It's happened. These immortals, known as Hoopers, are very tough to kill and the older they are, the stronger they are. Spatterjay was named after a pirate named "Spatter" Jay Hoop, a man hated by everyone for reasons I won't go into. About seven centuries ago, Hoop and his crew did some very bad things and one man, Sable Keech has been relentlessly hunting them down ever since one of Hoop's crew killed him. Huh, what? Yeah, Keech is a corpse, a reification who has some of his original brain left and one eye and the rest of his body is kept from rotting away by a special filtration system. He's sort of a cyborg-corpse and very dangerous (as some contract killers find out). Keech is intent on finding Hoop himself who is known as the Skinner for gruesome reasons you could probably guess at. And get this, the Skinner's head and body are living apart. I could go on and on about this cool book. Some other elements in it involve some nasty aliens, war drones, a planetary AI monitoring system, an intelligent hornet hive mind, dragons that work as sails for the Old Captains of Spatterjay, and some very tricky characters and nasty villains whose paths all intersect in one crazy, exciting sci-fi yarn, that's equal parts adventure, revenge tale, and horror story. What a rush. I loved it.
Interesting concept at play however there's just too much drab for it to be effective.
There were good parts, don't get me wrong, but the bad parts are so overwhelming in this book.
While I can understand from a philosophical point of view the attempt at establishing the local fauna in an interesting way the reality is that it's just too badly described. All the chapter epigraphs are ridiculous in this respect.
And in the last part of the book Asher discovers the word "dingle" and just doesn't let go. At least his use of obscure words is somewhat more diminished since his first book.
The only reason I don't rate this as 1 star is the relationship between Sniper and SM13. Actually Sniper turns out a really nice character. It also had a more decent ending than the first 2 Cormac books.
There were good parts, don't get me wrong, but the bad parts are so overwhelming in this book.
While I can understand from a philosophical point of view the attempt at establishing the local fauna in an interesting way the reality is that it's just too badly described. All the chapter epigraphs are ridiculous in this respect.
And in the last part of the book Asher discovers the word "dingle" and just doesn't let go. At least his use of obscure words is somewhat more diminished since his first book.
The only reason I don't rate this as 1 star is the relationship between Sniper and SM13. Actually Sniper turns out a really nice character. It also had a more decent ending than the first 2 Cormac books.
This really wasn't my kind of book, style-wise. I'll try to explain.
So, the book is about one of those killer worlds that seem to pop up now and then in science fiction. Latest example I ran into was Tuchanka in the game Mass Effect, in case that helps paint the picture for you. Everything wants to eat you and your dog too. Plus, this very special planet has leeches that, if they bite you, make you into Wolverine if he was drawn by Rob Liefeld.
That's the setting. The main characters? We've got Keech a walking corpse who might be a cop, Janer a guy who works for a hive of bees and Erlin a woman who's a doctor, sort of? Oh well, they're going to this killer world for reasons of their own, that we as readers aren't privy to.
And right there is where the book began to lose my interest. I was curious about these characters' motivations and goals at first, but since I didn't find them out until much furhter along into the book (I think Erlin talks about hers only on page 500 or something like that) I had trouble connecting with the characters and staying invested in what they were doing.
The POV shifts between these three (and soon a whole lot of others), but we don't learn much about their motivations or of them as people. We're told a lot of things (over and over and over), not shown much. There's a lot of environment description, repetition of facts the reader already knows and statements like "She knew she was going to live" which take the tension out of scenes.
I liked the story idea, I liked the world building. That's what kept me going to the end. The story left too many important parts out for too long while repeating others to the point where I found myself saying out loud "yes, I already know that" to the book. And that sort of takes the enjoyment part out of a mystery or adventure.
So, the book is about one of those killer worlds that seem to pop up now and then in science fiction. Latest example I ran into was Tuchanka in the game Mass Effect, in case that helps paint the picture for you. Everything wants to eat you and your dog too. Plus, this very special planet has leeches that, if they bite you, make you into Wolverine if he was drawn by Rob Liefeld.
That's the setting. The main characters? We've got Keech a walking corpse who might be a cop, Janer a guy who works for a hive of bees and Erlin a woman who's a doctor, sort of? Oh well, they're going to this killer world for reasons of their own, that we as readers aren't privy to.
And right there is where the book began to lose my interest. I was curious about these characters' motivations and goals at first, but since I didn't find them out until much furhter along into the book (I think Erlin talks about hers only on page 500 or something like that) I had trouble connecting with the characters and staying invested in what they were doing.
The POV shifts between these three (and soon a whole lot of others), but we don't learn much about their motivations or of them as people. We're told a lot of things (over and over and over), not shown much. There's a lot of environment description, repetition of facts the reader already knows and statements like "She knew she was going to live" which take the tension out of scenes.
I liked the story idea, I liked the world building. That's what kept me going to the end. The story left too many important parts out for too long while repeating others to the point where I found myself saying out loud "yes, I already know that" to the book. And that sort of takes the enjoyment part out of a mystery or adventure.
On Spatterjay it's eat or be eaten. Everything is on something else's menu, no exceptions. The leeches that infest the ocean and the land carry a virus that repairs injury and prolongs life - nothing like an endless supply of food for these leeches.
Three humans have come to Spatterjay, each with their own agenda...Sable Keech, a Polity monitor dead for over 700 years but still seeking the last of the eight people he swore to bring to justice for crimes against humanity during the Prador war; Erlin, a 240-year-old xenobiologist returning to Spatterjay to find her old lover Captain Ambel and maybe a new meaning in her increasingly-boring life and Janer, an 'eternal tourist' paid by an insect hive-mind to carry its hornet observers on his travels around the universe.
But Spatterjay has a history. During the Prador war, a pirate called jay Hoop and his band used it as a base for supplying the enemy Prador race with cored human blanks, basically humans with their neural systems ripped out. They killed millions of people and rumour has it that Hoop is still alive but transformed into a monstrous creature called 'The Skinner'. With all of Hoop's gang alraedy accounted for, it's this that Keech has come to kill for good.
Another excellent tale of Polity space from Neal Asher. The Prador, the inhabitants of Spatterjay (both human and indigenous), the Polity A.I.s and our three heroes all make this a fun ride from beginning to end.
Three humans have come to Spatterjay, each with their own agenda...Sable Keech, a Polity monitor dead for over 700 years but still seeking the last of the eight people he swore to bring to justice for crimes against humanity during the Prador war; Erlin, a 240-year-old xenobiologist returning to Spatterjay to find her old lover Captain Ambel and maybe a new meaning in her increasingly-boring life and Janer, an 'eternal tourist' paid by an insect hive-mind to carry its hornet observers on his travels around the universe.
But Spatterjay has a history. During the Prador war, a pirate called jay Hoop and his band used it as a base for supplying the enemy Prador race with cored human blanks, basically humans with their neural systems ripped out. They killed millions of people and rumour has it that Hoop is still alive but transformed into a monstrous creature called 'The Skinner'. With all of Hoop's gang alraedy accounted for, it's this that Keech has come to kill for good.
Another excellent tale of Polity space from Neal Asher. The Prador, the inhabitants of Spatterjay (both human and indigenous), the Polity A.I.s and our three heroes all make this a fun ride from beginning to end.