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