The Skinner

Spatterjay #1

by Neal Asher

Neal Asher, whom Tor introduced to the American audience with Gridlinked , takes us deeper into his unique universe with an even more remarkable second novel, The Skinner . On the planet Spatterjay arrive three Janer, acting as the eyes of the hornet Hive mind, on a mission not yet revealed to him; Erlin, searching for Ambel -- the ancient sea captain who can teach her how to live; and Sable Keech, on a vendetta he cannot abandon, though he himself has been dead for 700 years. This remote world is mostly ocean, and it is a rare visitor who ventures beyond the safety of the island Dome. Outside it, only the native Hoopers dare risk the voracious appetites of the planet's wildlife. But somewhere out there is Spatterjay Hoop -- and Keech will not rest until he brings this legendary renegade to justice for hideous crimes committed centuries ago during the Prador Wars. While Keech is discovering that Hoop is now a monster -- his body and head living apart from each other -- Janer is bewildered by a place where the native inhabitants just will not die and angry when he finally learns the Hive mind's intentions for him. Meanwhile, Erlin thinks she has plenty of time to find the answers she seeks, but could not be more wrong. For one of the most brutal of the alien Prador is about to pay the planet a surreptitious visit, intent on exterminating all remaining witnesses to his wartime atrocities. As the visitors' paths converge, major hell is about to erupt in a chaotic waterscape where minor hell is already a remorseless fact of everyday life . . . and death.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Audiobook, Horror, Adventure, Fantasy

432 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

I’ve been an engineer, barman, skip lorry driver, coalman, boat window manufacturer, contract grass cutter and builder. Now I write science fiction books, and am slowly getting over the feeling that someone is going to find me out, and can call myself a writer without wincing and ducking my head. As professions go, I prefer this one: I don’t have to clock-in, change my clothes after work, nor scrub sensitive parts of my body with detergent. I think I’ll hang around.

Source: http://www.blogger.com/profile/139339...

Reviews

[Mark Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I don't read a lot of sci-fi but I thought this was a very good read. For me this wasn't so much a book about characters as it was about the things they do and the world they inhabit. Fortunately the world/s they occupy are full of fascination of both the biological and technological varieties and there's a complex and fast moving plot. So whilst I didn't feel a great emotional investment in any of the characters, I was very interested in reading what happened to them.

The universe Asher has created here is stuffed with potential on both the small and large scales. We see conflict and/or intrigue on a galactic scale and across the seabed of a single planet where monsters of all shapes and sizes devour each other for our entertainment.

The world and its vicious ecology are an integral part of this story and constitute a character in themselves.

I can see why Asher's work has such a strong following and you can count me as a fan - I shall definitely take another trip with the polity and the prador.

PS - The cover on the copy I have beats this cover by a factor of 100.


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[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A 700 year old ECS agent who happens to be a resurrected corpse…
A “perpetual” tourist working for the Hornet Hive Mind…
A Planet so dangerous that it can give wedgies to Harry Harrison’s Deathworld…
A virus that grants virtual immortality and indestructibility…
A centuries old AI war drone with an attitude and “authority” issues…
An ancient enemy of humanity looking to start smack and raise a ruckus…
A psychotic, sadistic bitcharoony with a serious case of the crankies.
Oh…and...THE SKINNER!!

Welcome to SPATTERJAY folks.


Neal Asher’s “polity” novels are a MUCHO more violent, action-based and less cerebral version of Iain Banks “Culture” novels (which I also love). While not as polished or well-written as the Culture novels, Asher’s books are still plenty prosey and usually rate higher for me on the “Ahhh” enjoyment level. Before I plot summarize, here is a brief background of “The Polity” for those that have never experience Asher.

THE POLITY

The Polity is an AI-controlled/governed confederation headquartered on Earth (not sure if AIocracy is an accepted term, but that’s what I would call it). The Polity is a post-scarcity society where technology has made life’s essentials available to everyone. Travel between worlds in the Polity is instantaneous via large teleportation devices called “runcibles” which are the lynchpin to connecting the Polity worlds.

So I don’t have to say this numerous times throughout the review, let me quickly say that the parallels between the framework of the Polity and the Culture is very similar with two primary exceptions. First, the Polity seems to be at a much earlier stage of development than the Culture and is still going through growing pains (e.g., there are terrorist separatist groups within Polity worlds that seek to disconnect worlds from Polity control, usually by taking out the afore-mentioned runcibles). Second, Banks and Asher appear to come at their AI-ocracies from two different mind-sets, likely based on their divergent political viewpoints. Thus, where Banks sees the Culture as the ideal form of political evolution with most strife coming from outside the Culture, Asher depicts the Polity as having significantly more warts.

Anyway, because of the general level of contentment inside the Polity, most of the stories take place either outside of Polity space or on Line worlds (i.e., planets bordering Polity space that are not yet fully part of the Polity). The Polity AI deals with these worlds/situations primarily through the ECS (Earth Central Security) made up of mostly human agents.

PLOT SUMMARY

Spatterjay is a Line world on the edge of the Polity. It is mostly ocean with small islands scattered around the planet. Most Polity citizens reside on a single island safely behind a protective Dome which guards the runcible allowing access to Spatterjay.

Outside the dome is Darwinism run amok. Long ago, the native leaches, big FUGLY nasties, evolved the “Spatterjay virus” to ensure a constant food supply. The virus now permeates the planet and makes the native life EXTREMELY hard to kill while also allowing recovery from almost any injury. The original purpose of the virus was to allow the leeches, which feed by ripping chunks of meat from their prey, to eat their fill and then allow the prey to recover so that it could be “harvested” again. It’s like a never ending hamburger.

Infected humans who live and work on Spatterjay are some seriously tough, badass hombres. Plus, as time passes, the infected humans (known as “hoopers”) continue to get stronger and harder to kill until they are virtually immortal and invulnerable.

This setting act as a perfect backdrop for a gritty, multi-threaded plot that I thought was very well done. ECS agent Sable Keech is a 700 year old “reification” (i.e., living corpse) who has come to Spatterjay to track down and kill Hoop (aka the Skinner) for crimes against humanity committed during the Polity/Prador war centuries before. With Keech is Janer, a human working for the Hornet Hive Mind who has been sent by the Hive for a “mysterious” purposes not known to Janer (I’ll let you learn the backstory of the Hive). Janer and Keech are joined by Erlin, a hooper who has returned to Spatterjay to find her old captain who she hopes can help her live with being immortal.

All three of their paths will eventually converge in a plot involving a particularly brutal and savage member of the Prador looking to settle some 700 year old scores. All the while, the Polity AI “Warden” and its various sum-minds are involved in a complex nuance plan of their own that involve all of the players in this little drama.

Blood, gore, mayhem and action infused in a complex, nuanced plot and spiced with some amazingly cool SF ideas and concepts. I had a lot of fun with this and thoroughly enjoyed myself. If you are fan of the Richard Morgan’s Takeshi Kovacs novels or think you might like an action-film version of the Iain Banks’ Culture novels, this may be a nice fit. For me, I was in blood-drenched heaven. 5.0 Stars. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!

[Dirk Grobbelaar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know where to start. This book was bloody marvelous. It is dark, violent and entertaining. It is complicated and satisfying. It weaves many, many threads that culminate in splendid conclusions. The huge cast of characters, from the 700-years dead Sable Keech right through to the spunky submind/drone called Sniper, are all awesome. If you are interested in reading a book about killer fish, killer aliens, killer hornets, killer decapitated heads, killer AIs, killer crustaceans and all other kinds of killer objects, then this is the book for you. In fact, if you like science fiction at all, this is the book for you. It really is that good. It is a weirdly exhilarating roller coaster ride that leaves the reader begging for more. I'm certainly going to be looking into the rest of Mr Asher's catalog.

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's almost unfair just how good Asher is with his space opera. I mean, there's hardly any space in this one and I'm flabbergasted at how much awesome alien life can be crammed in a single book.

Of course, it could happen in no other place than the most f***ed up planet in the universe.

Spatterjay. The place where life just holds on. And on. And on. Nothing dies unless it gets THOROUGHLY destroyed. And that means every life form, once infected, is effectively immortal. ALL life forms. I swear, if I didn't know this was SF, I would immediately assume it's a Lovecraftian horror. And it's FANTASTIC. :)

Enter equally messed-up characters, including one that refuses to go full AI despite having been dead and carrying around his corpse for 700 years... can you imagine what happens to HIM on a world where dead doesn't exist? Add a hive mind, a girl on a quest to live, and enough Prador on personal missions to make Prador Moon seem like a happy memory.

Beautiful setup, right? Well, it gets better. I got the distinct impression I was reading a ghost story with all the chills and frights. With the obvious twist where nothing dies, of course. Add a bit of Captain Ahab gigantic monsters that can only be taken down with VERY heavy artillery, giving even AI drones a run for their money, and I just have to say.... PLEASE, LET ME NEVER TAKE A VACATION HERE.

So delightfully wicked.

[Veronika Sebechlebská · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sú planéty, kde žijú obrovské krvilačné pavúky. Sú planéty, kde obrovské krvilačné pavúky nevyjdú po zotmení bez biolitu. Sú planéty, kde biolit nevyjde z domu bez biolitu a kapsuly strychnínu v dutom zube. A potom je tu Spatterjay.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 Stars


The Skinner by Neal Asher is one hell of an awesome creature feature meshed in a hard science fiction world.


“The Skinner was complete again and Janer had never before witnessed such a terrible sight. For here was a real monster: a blue man four metres tall and impossibly thin, hands like spiders, a head combining elements of warthog and baboon with much of a human skull, evil black eyes and ears that were bat wings, spatulate legs depending underneath the long jaw like feelers and, when it opened its long mouth, row upon row of jagged black teeth.”


I am a fan of Asher’s as I have read a few books in his Agent Cormac series. This book is the first in the Spatterjay series and it could not be more different from the aforementioned series. Where the Cormac series is a space opera mixed with hard boiled action. This series is a smaller scoped creature feature that takes place in the same universe. It too is grounded in action rather than characters and dialogue.

Asher is an incredibly imaginative writer of science fiction. It is filled with magnificent artificial intelligence, cool ass creatures, bad ass good guy’s, and really bad bad guys. In The Skinner, we are introduced to the “Hoopers”. These are people that have come to the planet of SpatterJay because it contains a unique virus. One that once you are infected by it, you will now become nearly immortal. The Hoopers, purposefully become infected and as a result there are some that are 1000 years old. They possess a healing ability that may as well be instantaneous. They hardly bleed. The virus changed the DNA in people to the point where the virus is the most important part of you and any other part can be simply regrown. Including your brain. Hoopers grow uglier due to scarring and stronger with age. The old ones possess the strength of many men.

Wow do I love the Hoopers!!!!

Spatterjay is not ruled by man…it is ruled by Leeches!!! No they are not smart and they cannot talk or think. They are however very hungry and very hard to kill. They carry the virus…

This whole world building by Asher is so unique that I feel that it is a must read by all science fiction fans. There are some great characters in this novel, some of the being robots.

I had a great deal of fun reading this book and cannot wait for more from SpatterJay….Awesome.

---------------------------------------------------------
Reread in February 2015.

I forgot how cool this horror creature feature is. I loved the ship going scenes. How messed up and cool is it when they fish for the Turbul. The Hoppers take the caught fish and literally rip the entire skeleton of the fish out of its own flesh leaving a tube of meat. If that is not cool enough, they throw the skeletons back into the water wear they swim away to regrow again thanks to the Spatterjay virus...Awesome!

I loved the Captains fighting in a contest where cut off appendages, eyes, and spilled guts is par for the course. The main plot behind the Skinner...Jay Hooper and a missing head...freaking sweet. Keech is such a cool character. A man who was dead for 700 years and now underwent reification and was resurrected. Part man part machine...100% cool!

This book is a sci-fi action dream. Cool creatures, powerful, unkillable men, robots, and a scary headless creature...

Fun is the word that best describes my take on The Skinner...

[Sarah Mazza · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel started out engaging, based in a highly detailed world with many novel concepts. The culture, history, infrastructure and the types of creatures that inhabited this world were well developed and thoroughly thought out and explained - to the point where, for me personally, it became exhausting and highly repetitive. I felt I was being told, in detail, the same concepts again and again. The narrative paused, many, many times, so the characters could battle or be mauled by the very dangerous fish in this world's sea. I found that this overshadowed many of the other clever elements in the story, such as the effects of immortality on the human psyche over centuries (a point also driven home repetitively) or the ascending of beastlike creatures to a higher intelligence. Other fantastic ideas included a character who was connected to a hive mind, and another who was an animated, embalmed corpse, kept functioning and intelligent by technology. Unfortunately, I became so unengaged by the repetitive nature of this story, that I didn't finish the last 10-20% of the book.

A quick disclaimer: when I picked up this book I didn't realise 90% of the story would be set at sea, on a mostly medieval style ship, which would normally make me steer clear of a book, because it is a theme I don't enjoy.

[Phil · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read this several times now and still love this book. I first discovered Neal Asher a few decades ago with his Gridlinked and hence the 'polity' universe he created. Soon after that, I picked up The Skinner, also set in the polity universe. The polity is somewhat similar to Bank's Culture universe, in that AIs run the show, but Asher's universe is, lets say, a bit more violent. Let me first establish the context of this novel before the review.

About 1000 years before The Skinner, humanity had spread across the stars, largely using complex machines that 'translate' people from one place to another. Eventually, they encountered the Prador-- crab like beings with a society structured around violence and survival of the fittest. A really nasty war ensued that lasted for centuries, as each side had advanced but different tech. Outside of the polity proper, a band of space pirates, led by Jay Hooper, discovered the planet Splatterjay at first to use it as an arms depot. They quickly found out, however, that most of the life forms there carried a virus and they themselves were infected. The splatterjay virus co-exists within humans and grants them (over time) incredible strength and healing properties while also making them almost immortal.

Meanwhile, the Prador had 'thrall' technology, which enabled them to control another being completely, but base humans were too fragile for it (it basically involves 'coring' their brain and inserting the thrall). People infected with the splatterjay virus, however, could be thralled. So, Jay and his band started kidnapping humans on a mass scale and taking them to Splatterjay, where they were first infected and then sold to the Prador to make human thralls. Millions of thralls! After the war was over, the pirate band dispersed, but one polity agent, Sable Keetch, was tasked with hunting them down. Sable starts the story as a 'reif', which means his dead body, along with an AI core, still functions. He has been hunting Jay's band for 700 years now, and got a lead that one of them was back on Splatterjay.

Splatterjay is an amazing planet-- largely ocean, the fauna are nasty to the extreme. Perhaps the most ubiquitous are the leeches, which first live on land until they get so large they take to the sea. One bite from a leech and you are infected. Just about every life form on Splatterjay can kill a human, however, from leaches to mad whelks. Each chapter here starts with a story with one life form devouring another in the sea!

This is not really a character driven novel by any means, although Asher does give us a colorful cast. Besides Sable Keetch, we have a bunch of old 'hoopers' (e.g., those infected by the virus), many of which were former slaves of Jay's pirate band, and now 700 years old or so. Dozens of these old hoopers are now sea captains, making their living by harvesting the sea, and that is no easy job! We also have an ornery old polity war drone (Sniper) who works for the AI in charge of the planet (basically translating people to and from the planet via their moon), some rogue Prador who used to work with Jay Hooper's gang, Jay Hooper's old girlfriend, who really is a psychopath and a half, a guy working for a hornet hive mind, and finally, but not inclusively, the skinner, which is actually old Jay Hooper himself, but 'gone native'. If you are infected with the virus, you need to eat normal human food on occasion as that slows down the virus; if not, the virus will take over and it only knows survival. Essentially, a person will eventually loose all their humanity and become an eating machine.

Now, take these characters and insert them into the killer world of Splatterjay, stir them up with the vivid imagination of Neal Asher, add some big guns and other war tech (and a handful of mercenaries) and you get the The Skinner. I love Asher's dark humor and the crazy battle scenes that should scratch the itch of any action junkie. This story moves along at a great pace, through the eyes of many characters, and for me, really cemented Asher as one of my favorite contemporary authors. Do not expect profound ponderings on the human condition here, but do expect to be entertained by a master of the craft, with enough 'gee wiz' tech and action to keep the adrenaline flowing. 5 glowing stars!

Now,

[Apatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every time I pick up a book by an author I have never read before I always hope to find a “new favorite”, most of the time this does not happen. I mean what are the odds? If I find a “new favourite” author every month I would not be a very discerning reader. The best I can realistically hope for is to discover a new author whose back catalogue I am keen to investigate. Still, occasionally I strike gold, I think I just did.

There are zillions of genre authors vying for my attention when I browse bookstores. The only way I can narrow down my search for an exciting new author is by recommendations. Personally I don't trust recommendations generated by computer algorithms, I find them interesting but I would rather get recs from my peers at PrintSF. In the aggregate they are vastly knowledgeable about sf and their recommendations are always reliable.

Neal Asher is one of the names that crop up again and again alongside “space opera” sf luminaries such as Iain Banks, Alastair Reynolds and Peter F. Hamilton. For some reason British authors seem to be dominating this thriving subgenre of sf. The aforementioned Banks, Reynolds and Hamilton have one thing in common, they are good storytellers, good world builders and - more importantly - good prose writers and characters creators. Basically they just write damn well and we are lucky they are writing in our much maligned genre.

The Skinner is set on an amazing watery world full of weird and unfriendly (mostly marine) creatures, no cure cute bunnies to be found anywhere. They all want to eat you. On a larger scale the planet Spatterjay is on the periphery of Asher’s Polity galactic empire which is not explored in any detail in this particular volume. As I understand it it is a little similar to Iain Banks’ Culture, but I can not really compare them usefully from reading just this one entry in Asher’s series. One thing I have noticed is that the A.I. and drones in this book are very similar to their counterparts in Banks’ books. They are snarky, funny and aggressive. However, The Skinner is not a poor Culture knock off, Asher’s writing style is not as literary and his pacing in this book is faster than the Culture books I have read.

The gosh-wow mind blowing sf elements are all very well, but without some decent prose and character developments to act as foundations to mount them on the book would be unreadable. Kudos to Neal Asher for not forgetting this. The prose is very readable, the dialogues are often very good and the characters are just great to hang out with. Particularly noteworthy is Sable Keech who is a sort of cyborg / zombie / badass cop hybrid. My only criticism is that I find the frequent point of view switches not as smooth as I would like. Not that it hinders the readability of the book much though.

In conclusion I am glad I gave Neal Asher a try and I will be reading many more of his books.

[Bee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok so this was the first Neal Asher I finished. I have started Gridlinked four or five times and eventually stopped, doesn't mean it's bad, just didn't gel with me at the time.

This was a very fun book. Reads like Banks vs Hamilton. Less waffle than Hamilton, and less peaceful cultural observations and musings than Banks.

This was all action, most of the time, pacing was good, all the scifi bits were very satisfying. I enjoy his level of tech very much.

I loved the Hoopers. Escaped slaves that had been mutated into very powerful beings over time with a viral infection. I loved Keech the Zombie cop, and the whole Wasp Hive side story. It was ll pretty damn cool.

It's a good book, nothing new or amazing, but very entertaining. I'll read some more Asher soon.

[Shawnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found it too much work figuring out who/what everyone was and where I was in the story. Otherwise, I really liked the planet life, dangerous creatures, and Keech.

[Eddie Owens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spatterjay is an interesting new world and the natives Hoopers are awesome.

Plenty of action and some cool tech.

Worthy addition to the polity saga.

[Harold Ogle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great post-nanotech thriller/adventure SF story. Say that five times fast.

It's also the first Asher I've read, and I find his writing broadly similar to both Alastair Reynolds and Iain M. Banks in the setting and even type of story being told. That said, it's definitely distinct from either of those, most notably through the heavy reliance on nanotechnology and the different approach to Artificial Intelligences (the ones here are more similar to Banks' Culture drones, but they're much more human in personality, outlook, and flaws...which makes them considerably more interesting - I would say that, overall, all of the characters here are more passionate than characters in Banks novels).

Here's the set-up: the story begins with a shuttle descending to a border world, where the human civilization of The Polity has a monitoring station but little to no actual jurisdiction, because the native humans haven't voted to join the Polity. In the shuttle is a passenger lounge, in which two passengers sit, shunned by everyone else. One is accompanied by sentient hornets - so is naturally shunned by everyone on board (Asher seems to be heavily entophobic, and writes as if everyone else is, too). The other is a "reif" (reification), which is a cybernetically enhanced deceased person, who is kept animate and conscious by a complicated and elaborate array of embalming fluids, pumps, monitors and sensors. They have become acquainted because they are the only people who will talk to them without revulsion...and then they are joined by a woman who is returning to the planet after hundreds of years offworld. Back then, she'd been bitten by one of the native leeches on the planet, which contains a self-replicating virus that effectively repairs all tissue damage over time...making the carriers of that virus free from aging. Each member of this motley crew has an agenda for visiting this planet, and the book does a great job in teasing out those agendas.

I loved this book and could practically not put it down until I'd finished it, despite having to stop for things like eating, working, socializing, sleeping...I will definitely be reading more of Asher's work after this.

[Ric · Rating 5 out of 5]

The word for world is ... Ocean (apologies to Ursula Leguin). This is Spatterjay, a waterworld populated by decidedly hostile fauna, backdrop for a richly imagined multi-threaded story that rivals the best SF books of the 2000s. Quite a tour-de-force worthy of multiple re-reads, and deserving of the lofty 4+ rating on Goodreads.

Here we meet Sable Keech, the most interesting of a long list of characters, a reification (resuscitated dead person), following the centuries old trail of a criminal. And here too is the Spatterjay virus, delivered by truly eek-inducing giant leeches, turning ordinary sea-faring humans into perpetual, self-repairing leech-meal. Asher casually drops in the imaginative quotient of the whole Foundation series to produce an entertaining space opera that has not paled over the years.

With this further expansion of his Polity universe, Neal Asher convinces me that his is a more engaging vision, compared to say, Iain Banks's Culture, which now seems too perfect and intellectual. In The Skinner, staged on the boundary of the Polity, I find a grittier world populated with strange creatures. At the beginning of the book, it seemed I had walked into an alternate version of Perdido Street Station, with all the squishy, mushy beasts, all of whom seem to have an inimical nature. But the story quickly takes on a unique voice and brings the reader along on a truly wild ride.

The one nit is that it has no ending to speak of, but sort of fades to black to leave plot threads to be resolved in the sequel. Otherwise, highly recommended.

[Psychophant · Rating 4 out of 5]

I tended to consider Neal Asher as "ersatz Iain M. Banks". Good enough to give me a dose of Space Opera adventure with some brains, while waiting for a new Banks book that usually made me think harder.

This is the book that changed that view. The Skinner follows many of the Space Opera conventions, including big adventure, big guns and bigger than life characters. Much bigger than life in this novel, as coping with inmortality, and boredom, and past mistakes and crimes, is one of the common threads linking most of the main characters, followed by another classical S-f one, what makes you human, or at least a sentient assimilable by human society. Well explored and presented without either preaching or being

The backdrop for this tapestry of big heroes and villains is a quite well defined planet and setting, making the local ecology an extra character, and one with plenty to say.

Archetypical plot and characters, very well presented, well crafted setting and interactions. Patches for all the holes that may appear. Likable characters, at least those who will survive, and many of them. It is hard to find a best example of how good entertainment a book can be. Only the formulaic nature of the medium keeps it from a perfect score, but I would give it 4 and a half if I could.

The kind of book that keeps me up the whole night because I do not want to miss how things turn out.

[Voodoochilli · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really thought I was going to enjoy this book. It is full of so many ideas: virus's that give the victim immortality, massive pirates with muscles so big they have to be careful they don't accidentally rip other people apart, weird aliens, bodies resurrected with the use of AI software, hive minds and sentient computers. I just didn't like it. I am sorry to say I read just over 100 pages then just couldn't take any more. I kept reading page after page thinking it was going to get better but it didn't.

I think the problem with the book, for me anyway, isn't the content or ideas as there are plenty. It's something about how the book is written. I found it hard to follow, not because what was said didn't make sense but somehow the words just didn't flow. I understand this is one of Asher's earlier books so maybe things have changed. Maybe it's just my own personal preference. Anyway, I'm not writing off the book, I'm just saying that for me personally it wasn't as enjoyable as it would seem. I have been reading a lot of Alistair Reynolds lately, and it might be that the bar is set too high in terms of great writing.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Vít · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stahovač byl kdysi můj první Asher, a byla to láska na první pohled. Od té doby jsem toho od něj přečetl pěknou řádku a vždycky to stálo za to.
Je to šťavnatá a svižná space opera, která nenudí ani při třetím čtení. Planeta Spatterjay si nezadá s Planetami smrti a proti nim je to navíc neskutečný gejzír nápadů - celá ta místní ekologie je naprosto šílená záležitost, a třeba takové místní lodní plachty, to rozhodně nikde jinde nenajdete. K tomu váleční roboti které si prostě musíte zamilovat, oživené mrtvoly, inteligentní sršni...
Opět pět hvězd a myslím, že si dám znovu celou sérii.

Edit 16.5.2021:
Dočteno potřetí a pořád platí všechno, co jsem napsal výše. Včetně těch pěti hvězd, samozřejmě.

[Susanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the forth Polity novel I've read and I think...I think I love this universe almost as much as Banks' Culture. (I never thought I'd say this.) The Skinner takes place on Hooper (aka Spatterjay), a planet not entirely under polity control and infested with the most aggressive fauna I've ever come across. Not surprising, then, that it's the fauna (and the virus it transmits, making humans near-immortal and virtually indestructable) that is the basis for the entire plot: a dead guy, a biologist, a space tourist and a handful of so-called Hoopers are hunting the Skinner, a man-turned-monster who has survived on his island without his head for hundreds of years. They travel on boats with sentient sails. AWESOME. Who needs spacecraft when you can have leeches.

It wouldn't be a polity novel without a warden AI and its attendant subminds. The drones are always my favourite characters, and I wasn't disappointed this time around. Their constant bickering and one-upmanship never fails to amuse me, and in particular the effects of injecting some of Sniper's 'attitude' code into some of the smaller drones had me laughing out loud.

The Skinner is funny in places, utterly gross in others, a bit violent, and highly entertaining. I can't wait to read the next Spatterjay novel.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun, but not greater than the sum of its parts.

This book has a bunch of novel ideas and that's probably what I liked best about it. Pirates on sailing ships on an alien world where the ships' sails are sentient creatures and the pirates are nearly immortal thanks to a virus. Weird sea creatures, mindless human slaves for their alien crab masters, sentient AIs both lawfully and chaotically good, dead bodies kept alive and walking around with AI, and even more weird and dangerous sea creatures. Plenty happens across a couple of entangled plot lines and it's easy to keep reading. I picked this wanting something fun that'd hold my attention and I absolutely got what I was after.

However, I see this compared to The Culture and I think such comparisons aren't quite fair. The author's writing is on a level below Mr Banks', or Peter F Hamilton's, and there are some pretty awkward grammatical choices in there that I'm surprised an editor didn't pick up. It's not bad, it's good, just not worthy of elevating beyond that.

Beware that the Kobo version has had the formatting ruined and as well as the chapters not showing up, there are no breaks where there should be gaps within chapters to denote a change of perspective, making the jump from one paragraph to the next often jarring once you realise that we're following someone else now.

[Lel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a hard book to get into and follow. It took a while to work out who everyone was and actually what has happening in the book. It ends up coming down to a basic find and kill the bad guy book. Although in this case the bad guy has turned into a headless alien that is nigh indestructible.

The characters were interesting once you could work out who was who. I like Keech and his ability to heal themselves with his machine augmentations.

A lot of the ideas in the book were amazing, and to me, very original. Like Keetch's healing ability, the fact that you turned 'native' if you didn't have enough proper food, the creatures of the hostile world and the interaction between them.

I have to say I would only recommend this book if you had read others set in the same universe. I felt like I has missed something by not knowing about the previous war and the crimes that were committed. But overall this was a good, if gruesome book.

[Tim Hicks · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was fun! Complex plot, lots of Scifi ideas, characters with attitude and a bit of plausible actual development too. Monsters. Aliens. AIs. All kinds of weapons. A war drone with some serious attitude. Gore. Humour. I stayed up way too late finishing this.

There's no need to compare this book to anyone else's. Just enjoy it.

[Michael Battaglia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Neal Asher, you surprise me.

After I read "Gridlinked" I had noted that he had thus gone zero for two in terms of an interesting reading experience for me, but I was pretty sure that was the last book of his I had in queue. Alas, as I started the next pile over I noticed that there was yet one more book with his name on lurking about halfway down, seeming proving that my twenty-something year old self who bought was out to spite me and guaranteeing that if I ever had the opportunity to go back in time and give myself advice I would probably forgo that and smack the crap out of myself.

And yet two months after I swore that he was mostly a writer of hollow stories with interesting concepts, marked ultraviolence and little else, he apparently goes out of his way to prove me wrong. Yeah, the violence is still there but this time he manages to take an interesting concept and marry it to an interesting story with characters that I could at least remember who they were an hour after finishing the book.

This one seems tailor made for some kind of adult cartoon. Erlin Tazer is a doctor who's over two hundred years old, having gained immortality through the weird ecology of Spatterjay. Turns out a virus transmitted by leeches can transform you into a Looney Tunes character where you can get hurt but not stay hurt for long, but unless you regularly eat virally untainted food you're going to wind up being turned into a giant leech. Most of the human inhabitants of the planet are Old Captains that were present during a war several hundred years ago, most of them slaves of the Prado race, a crustaceanesque lifeform that has a habit of scooping out peoples' brains and spinal cords and basically turning them into mobile tools. The slaves were freed during the war but as the Captains, like aged cheeses, get stronger the longer they live, most of them are pretty durable by this point. Erlin's back to figure out how to avoid stayed bored while immortal and maybe rekindle an old romance.

Hanging out with her is Janer Anders, who thanks to an agreement is the eyes and ears of a hornet hivemind, who send him all over the place to be living tourbook, which is cool because he gets to travel on their dime but sometimes their curiosity takes him to less than ideal locales. Also along is Sable Keech, who is literally the walking dead, a corpse reanimated via cybernetics that is working his way through the last war criminals of the war with the Prado, bringing them to justice by way of blowing their heads off. He's got one more left on his list then he can do whatever it is the dead do when they retire (probably die).

Throw in the orbital based Warden keeping an eye on the planet via various drones, an independent drone named Sniper that has all the snark and sarcasm you expect from a drone named Sniper, some mercenaries hunting Keech and a band of aliens who'd prefer to eliminate every witness to their previous war crimes and you have a dense mix that could get way out of hand. And yet it doesn't.

A couple elements keep things entertaining here. One is the rich backstory. "Gridlinked", his first novel, was unable to convey the complexities of his Polity universe in between boring scenes of psychopaths trying to kill each other. In his second novel he's got the act figured out and is able to deploy the history in a way that both informs the character actions (everyone is mostly reacting to a war that half the cast was around for) and allows interesting nuggets to be dropped now and then to liven things up.

The second is the planet itself. I'm not sure how feasible the ecology of Spatterjay is, but he's at least thought through the prospects of planet where it seems like every aspect is designed to be lethal to everything else, meaning they have to either evolve to withstand it or be more lethal. On the one hand you could construe it as one long tribute to Harry Harrison's "Deathworld" books, just with pirates this time, but its got a character all its own.

And speaking of character, not only does he have better characters this time but more of them. While Sable Keech winds up being the standout due to the fact that he's the one with most of the heavy weaponry, the book is populated by enough aliens, drones, mercenaries, other pirates and so on to keep the plot sharp and while they aren't supremely multi-faceted they're at least more than empty vessels for the plot to be poured into. The fact that everyone has motivations other than killing everyone else or staying alive keeps the book from getting stale. He even manages to juggle a multitude of plots without getting too bogged down, with enough intersections to feel like they aren't all in different books. The two Asher books I've read so far were fast reads mostly because the story was so lightweight I had no reason to linger. Here, with everyone busy all the time there's a lot more to keep track of and mull over. Even the conceit of nobody dying allows Asher to indulge in a decent amount of violence without going too over the top but it never gets boring or feel like its not serving the plot.

If the book falls short at all, its because the sheer mass of characters sometimes means all the pirates and mercenaries tend to blend together (I had trouble telling two of the crews apart and sometimes forgot what each was supposed to be doing) and not everyone's reasons for being there hold up over the course of four hundred plus pages. With Keech turning into the action hero the book has threatened us with from the start there isn't much left for Janer to do and even less for Erlin, so you're not exactly waiting on pins and needles to see how the next plot development affects them. Its clear as the book heads toward the climax that Asher is more interested in what Keech can do as well as the Warden's antics with his numerous drones. Its also clear that the original purpose of the plot (Keech was hunting down OG Captain Jay Hoop, whose head has been separated from his body and is nearly impossible to kill . . . oh, and he skins people) sort of falls by the wayside when the Prado start blowing things up with an unexpected ally, but Asher insists on finishing off the Skinner plot anyway, resulting in a "everyone chases a murderous bellowing monster around an island" subplot that not only sounds like an R-rated episode of "Scooby Do" but pales in comparison to what Keech and company are doing.

Regardless, there's more than enough here to hold your attention (its probably longer than it needs to be but even the lesser plots don't drag) and coupled with more interesting characters, a sharper sense of dialogue, some well done action sequences and a feel of history happening as the plot unfolds it winds up being the first Asher book I can honestly say I enjoyed through and through. Whether this one is a fluke (it appears to be a start of a series) or we were simply briefly on the same frequency I don't know if I'll ever find out, but I can say for four hundred pages I was able to understand why people really enjoy his work.

[Zuzana Dankic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hahaha, toto bola nakladacka, dost som sa bavila v nejakych castiach. Inac to bolo dost drsne, ale co by ste od tazkotonaznej sci-fi zamorenej zvieratami, ktore papkaju co vidia, cakali. Kym som sa zorientovala v deji chvilu trvalo, ale potom ma to bavilo az do konca. Netusila som, ze moja najoblubenejsia postava z knihy sa stane stary bojovy robot Snajper s vlastnou prinasratou a drzackou osobnostou.

[Deb Omnivorous Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow!

This was a brilliant book, everything I have heard claimed about it is true. The Sci-Fi element is excellent and the fact that it is on a Marine based world totally rocked my boat (pardon the pun). I thought the world building was utterly spectacular. There is always something exciting about the really dangerous worlds created in Sci-Fi, this is one of them. On Spatterjay, most life is marine, all of it wants to kill you slowly and painfully and most of it, right down to the prawns, leaches and jellyfish can indeed kill you. The only real way anything survives, human or native, is by being infected with the Spatterjay virus. This virus infiltrates your tissues making you stronger and more invulnerable the longer you live. The flip side to surviving most things is that on this world there is a whole lot of pain to survive.

That is the basic worldbuilding and it is very, very good. I have only read one other book by this author and though I did not enjoy it, even there his world building ability was great. Here, that formidable talent is combined with a book that is very enjoyable to read. As well as the actual world, we have the AI that runs it, the 'Polity' that is an interstellar civilization, a number of alien species that all have interest in Spatterjay and bearing on the plot. One of those is the hive mind of Terrestrial wasps that has become recognised as intelligent and given equal rights to other intelligent species.

The characters are many, diverse, interesting and very equal to carrying the plot along. We have the different sea captains, hundreds of years old, almost invulnerable to injury or death due to the changes the virus has made in them as well as their younger crew members, infected but far from invulnerable. We have some of the BEST villains I have every encountered, no spoilers. However, the first three characters we meet are the ones that introduce us to the world and carry the plot through to the end for the reader. Erlin is a biologist who has worked on Spatterjay before, on the shuttle coming in she is intrigued by two fellow passengers and starts a conversation. One is a "reif" a dead man kept animated through a combination of chemical and mechanical means, the other has a wasp on his shoulder and works for the hive mind. These characters, each with their own agenda, navigate us through the intricate plot, it is a great journey.

About the characters: My main complaint from the last book by this author that I read, was that his characters were impossible to bond with, affecting my capacity to care about the plot. This is, to a certain degree true here as well but it is handled much better. While one can't actually bond with any of the characters here, they are all very interesting and there are a lot of them. So instead of having just one or two characters you don't believe in, Spatterjay has heaps of characters that are interesting and carry us through. The fact that these many characters are at best remote, emotionally, from the reader does not negatively affect the enjoyment of the story. Well done!

Also, each chapter starts with a little vignette describing the harsh violence of life in the seas of Spatterjay. Kill and be killed is the underlying way of all nature, of course, but these serial descriptions of predation fascinated me. So very well done! As a way of introducing us to the different wildlife it was excellent, instead of the narrative having to give us expositions, we went into the story already knowing what the relevant marine wildlife (and how, is it wild) was. And the description of the ocean life made the world so much more real to me.

Only one thing about this book annoyed me. Dingles! Dingles are everywhere on-land. What are Dingles you ask? Well it took me over 400 pages to figure it out. Normally I am very good at figuring out what invented words are from context but here I was utterly mystified and lost. For about 200 pages I assumed it meant a dip in the land as in 'from the dell floor' = "From the dingle floor" [pg 228]. An Australian will almost certainly assume that a dingle is a euphemism for male genitalia, but I was pretty sure that was not it. Google thinks it is a place in Ireland, or maybe India as does Wiki, though they are willing to concede that it may mean a stupid person as in 'ding dong'.

I figured it out eventually from context and I even have a theory about how it happened: Toward the end of editing, nearly ready to send the text to the publishers, when he was tired and not paying attention the poor Author (on a deadline no doubt) accidentally did that 'find and replace all' thing that wordprocesses do, and turned all words 'Jungle' into 'Dingle'. That is the only explanation that makes sense. Jungle, a dingle is a jungle.

[Ardent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plne zaslúžené 4* a teším sa na ďalšie diely (ktoré radšej začnem čítať až cez víkend, lebo kniha zákerne berie čas!).

Planéta Spatterjay je takou modernou inkarnáciou Planéty smrti. Všetko sa tu snaží zabiť všetko...a nevadí že veľká časť toho je prakticky nesmrteľná.

Postavy sú super, či už je to nemŕtvy Sabel Keech (čo robiť keď dostanete kontrakt na zabitie niekoho kto zomrel pred pár sto rokmi?), Pradori, Kapitáni, Plachty alebo AI (áno Sniper, pozerám na Teba).

Dej je naopak pomerne jednoduchý a slúži (dúfam) hlavne pre vybudovanie postáv a vytvorenie sveta. Všetci naháňajú Skinnera, niekto naháňa Keecha...a to je tak všetko.
Ale svet je to ozaj pekný...augmentácie, AI, úpravy rôzneho druhu a šup tam s pirátskym naratívom, lebo rum a piráti môžu máloktorú párty pokaziť. Teda príbehoví, nie somálski.

Kde sa stratila piata hviezdička? Za slabinu považujem zlázláňov (výraz záporák si možno okrem Ebulana snáď ani nezaslúžia). Sú tak nejak 2D lenivo napísaní a aspoň u mňa nevyvolali výrazné emócie. Tiež finálne "feelgood" odhalenie pri ohni zaváňalo cukrovkou...

[Jersy · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a really good and interesting story in this but there were just so many characters so that I couldn't process them all so I kept skipping chunks of parts of less relevant characters and when they became more important later on I didn't know what's going on anymore. What I was able to follow was great, though.
There were characters which parts I really liked and if this book just focused on only a few points of view I might have actually loved it. But the way it was it just increasingly confused me.
I liked the ideas and concepts of this world and the plot but there was too much going on for me. I had fun reading it and it was a pageturner is some way, so if you don't mind a ridiculous amount of characters you might like it more than I do.

[spikeINflorida · Rating 5 out of 5]

A captivating mix of science fiction and fantasy. Containing all the swashbuckling excitement of a YA story, but ratcheted up to a gritty adult level, this crazy weird novel includes killer crustaceans, a decapitated captain, carnivorous crabs, hornet hive-minds, AIs with attitude, lecherous leaches, super-human sailors, a vile villainess and a mummified zombie cyborg. A very original mix...just way, way cool. Looking forward to reading Spatterjay #2, The Voyage of the Sable Keech.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun and engaging from start to finish.

[Anselm Patey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to followPretty early in this book I was beating the air with relief that, finally in my 2023 reading list, I'd found something with genuinely witty and engaging prose. Something that reminded me of my favourite aspects of Chris Wooding's 'Tales of the Ketty Jay'. Asher has a great writing style, and expertly navigates the requirement to convey a sense of his intricately alien world without losing the reader's attention. One quickly realises that despite the futuristic setting, there is a real 'low tech' aspect to this world as well, so it's a little different to a lot of space opera you might have read. (High tech fun is still there too, though, so don't panic.)

I really loved the way each chapter began with the continuation of a natural story taking place deep beneath the waves, boosting the sense of moral nihilism in which this book is heavily marinated.

As I read on, I enjoyed myself at every stage, but I became increasingly aware of two minor niggles that prevented this book from ever becoming a 5-star read for me. (Indeed, it might have been a 3-star read but for the very cleverly tied-together conclusion which boosted it in my estimation considerably.) The first was that the book seemed to be all plot and almost no story. To explain, I subscribe to the idea that "plot" is the events that take place external to the characters, and "story" is the journey that takes place within the characters. I wouldn't say that this book has a great deal of hear - regard the note of moral nihilism above - and, in some ways, following the author on social media has convinced me that this is by design: towards the end of the book, one character says something like "I don't care about what's right, I only care about what's true", and I get the impression this may have been the author's true voice at play. It's not a major problem, but if you're especially married to character-driven fiction, this may disappoint you.

The other was that, despite this being billed as the first in a series, there were frequent references to previous events that made me worry I was missing out on something. It wasn't that the plot didn't make sense - it absolutely did, and all historical context was explained to my satisfaction - but rather than I felt like I'd arrived to the party late and maybe missed out on some fun. I've since learned that The Skinner is the first of the Spatterjay series, but not the first in the "Polity Universe" books, either in terms of publication or chronology. Which only makes me wish I'd made a plan of which order to read the books in before I started.

But despite two negative paragraphs of review, I actually really enjoyed this book and would definitely read more from Neal Asher. But if I decided to work through his list, I'd probably have to break it up with some other books that have a little more soul!