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Title: The Warship
Series: Polity: Rise of the Jain #2
Author: Neal Asher
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 350
Words: 138K
Series: Polity: Rise of the Jain #2
Author: Neal Asher
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 350
Words: 138K
Synopsis:
|
Cobbled Together from
Various Places
Orlandine
has destroyed the alien Jain super-soldier by deploying an actual
black hole. And now that same weapon hoovers up clouds of lethal Jain
technology, swarming within the deadly accretion disc’s event
horizon. All seems just as she planned. Yet behind her back, forces
incite rebellion on her home world, planning her assassination.
Earth
Central, humanity’s ruling intelligence, knows Orlandine was
tricked into releasing her weapon, and fears the Jain are behind it.
The prador king knows this too – and both foes gather fleets of
warships to surround the disc.
The
alien Client is returning to the accretion disc to save the last of
her kind, buried on a ship deep within it. She upgrades her vast
weapons platform in preparation, and she’ll need it. Her nemesis
also waits within the disc’s swirling dusts – and the Jain have
committed genocide before.
When
the Clade, a swarm AI, assassinates multiple nodes of Orlandine’s
consciousness, the Polity and the bellicose alien Prador Kingdom are
alarmed and send armadas to the Jaskoran system. On Jaskor, Clade
units cause further mayhem as they employ war and assassin drones to
battle the no-longer-human (but still sympathetic) Captain Trike,
who’s been overcome and made monstrous by the Spatterjay virus.
Meanwhile, in the vicinity of the accretion disc, something
mysterious is emerging from Underspace, and the Polity fears it’s a
Jain ship.
In
the end, Orlandine survives, the Jaskoran system is declared a 3rd
party “empire” by both Polity and AI, Trike embraces his
Spatterjay/Jain transformation, the Clade are dead and a fully
deranged Jain Warship has escaped into the galaxy.
My
Thoughts:
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So, here is what I am finding with Asher's books. I enjoy them pretty
well on the first read through. It doesn't really wow me or leaving
me desperately wanting to read the next one but I enjoy it immensely
and don't feel cheated in any way, ie, time or money. However, any
re-reads seem to get me past a barrier and I REALLY enjoy the books.
Weird huh?
That was just a roundabout way of saying that this book was pretty
good and I enjoyed it, but not as much as my previous Polity reads.
In fact, my enjoyment of this new trilogy is following the exact same
footprint as when I read the Transformation
trilogy (which dealt with the black AI Penny Royal). I
fully expect to enjoy it more the next time I do a Polity re-read.
One thing I am really liking about this trilogy is the inclusion of
Spatterjay Hooper Old Captains and Prador. This time around, we also
get a Prador vessel that is akin in size and power to the Cable
Hogue, a legendary Polity vessel that has appeared in earlier books.
We get to see a lot more how the spatterjay virus has and is changing
the Prador leadership and making them into beings able to at least
work with the Polity. I would not be surprised if in later books the
Polity and Prador became a united Entity against an outside threat.
I also enjoyed Orlandine's downfall. Asher does a great job of
showing that a fallible being doesn't stop having blindspots just
because they are/become more intelligent. But at the same time, her
fall doesn't destroy her. It was good to see her pick the pieces back
up and start fighting again.
★★★★☆
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