Review by Booklist Review
Asher returns to his popular far-future series, Polity Universe, with another fast-paced space opera filled with his trademark technological marvels and elaborate world building. In a world where consciousness is portable, artificial, and alien the Prador are crablike carnivores who are quite nasty Thorvald Spear awakens a century after his death in a new body but with full recollection of dying during the Prador-Human war. Asher drops readers straight into the action, as Spear seeks to avenge the death of his soldiers by the rogue AI ship, the Penny Royal. (The AI ships have personalities of their own, some not so nice.) On his search, he encounters Isobel Satomi, a perversely augmented human who turns her body into a viscous weapon for her own ends. Asher shifts the point of view in each chapter to various players in his galactic game the ships get chapters, too and the result is an exciting, intricate, and unabashedly futuristic story rife with twists and turns. Fans of Hannu Rajaniemi's The Quantum Thief (2010) will feel right at home in Asher's Polity Universe.--Clark, Craig Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Asher (the Owner trilogy) delivers an exciting beginning to a new trilogy set in his Polity universe. During a war between humans and the crablike alien Prador, Thorvald Spear was killed by Penny Royal, a warped AI. More than a hundred years later, he's revived to discover that the war is long over but Penny Royal is still around. Isobel Satomi made a deal with Penny Royal so she could become powerful in an interplanetary crime syndicate, but it granted her wish by starting her slow transformation into a carnivorous centipede. Both Spear and Satomi desire vengeance, which is complicated by several questions: not just where Penny Royal is and how to destroy it, but how much they are playing pre-ordained parts in its incomprehensible plan. This beautifully paced book does just as well at slam-bang action scenes as at painting frightening pictures of Isobel's changes, and provides an interesting climax while leaving plenty of space for the next two books. This is space opera at a high peak of craftsmanship. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Launching a new series set in his Polity universe, Asher (The Technician) blends large portions of horror and mystery into an sf tale of revenge and redemption. The Polity resurrects Thorvald Spear more than a century after his entire 8,000-man unit was destroyed in battle, not by the alien Prador but by Penny Royal, a Polity AI gone rogue. Discovering himself to be quite wealthy, Spear immediately puts that wealth to work to upgrade himself and then seek vengeance on Penny Royal. The AI has been busy, garnering a reputation for granting wishes, genie-like, that twist back on the wisher. One such unlucky customer is criminal boss Isobel Satomi, who wishes to be transformed into something that can "rip flesh from the bones of her enemies." Neither Spear nor Satomi can quite predict or understand the trajectory to the final confrontation with this AI that is "the absolute quintessence of sharp lethality." Verdict Asher will keep readers guessing as they follow his characters' bizarre turns of fortune. Other players-human, alien, and AI-fill the story, creating a complex and satisfying work.-Eric Norton, McMillan Memorial Lib., Wisconsin Rapids, WI (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
