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Title:
Weaponized
Series: Polity #22
Author:
Neal Asher
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre:
SF
Pages: 481
Words: 163K
It’s been almost two years since I read Jack Four, the previous Polity book by Asher. I still vividly recall that book though because of all the pooping. Thankfully, in Weaponized, Asher moves away from that. However, what he moves into is as close to body horror as I ever want to get. I’ll talk more on that later.
This novel takes place before and around the beginning of the Prador War. We follow one Ursula as she moves into the ennui stage of life (somewhere around the 200 year mark for most humans, kind of like a very deadly puberty phase of life), then beyond it and then into the present, where she is trying to colonize a world outside of Polity control. Asher slices the story up into Past, Near Past and Present and slices each time line up and interweaves them. So for Chapter 1, you’ll have Present, about Ursula fighting on the planet. Then we’ll switch to Near Past about the colonists discovering whatever they are fighting in the Present. Then we’ll go to the Past which starts with her going through the military and getting kicked out because of the ennui. While it was handled well, I didn’t like it. It was very different from his previous novels and I suspect he did it just to see if he could but I sure hope he’s done with that little “phase”.
The pace here was just as unrelenting and furious as in Jack Four. Which leads into the body horror. This was also a Jain tech novel. By now, fans of Asher know how horrible Jain tech is, how pervasive, twisting and overpowering it is. But instead of the jain changing the colonists over a period of years, it happens within months, days and even hours. They change from humans to whatever is needed to survive, not only physically but also mentally and emotionally. It was degradation on every level. What made it worse is that they chose it, even if they were under the influence of the jain tech. It became so bad that a Polity golem sacrificed herself to set off the entire CTD arsenal in a prador dreadnaught. Ursula STILL managed to survive and the novel ends with her entity being taken to a Polity AI to be studied. It was brutal. Asher does a great job of showing that the Polity is not some benevolent technocracy but just a series of programs weighing what is the best outcome for the greatest number. There have been times it felt like he was promulgating the idea that they were truly benevolent, but either my perceptions have changed or his writing has changed. Either way, it feels much more inline with my worldview and I for one am ok with whatever the reality of the change actually is.
Another fantastic journey into the heart of a future as envisioned by Neal Asher. I continue to recommend this Polity series.
★★★★☆
From the Publisher
With the advent of new AI technology, Polity citizens now possess incredible lifespans. Yet they struggle to find meaning in their longevity, seeking danger and novelty in their increasingly mundane lives.
On a mission to find a brighter future for humanity, ex-soldier Ursula fosters a colony on the hostile planet Threpsis. Here, survival isn’t a given, and colonists thrive without their AI guidance. But when deadly alien raptors appear, Ursula and her companions find themselves forced to adapt in unprecedented ways. And they will be pushed to the very brink of what it means to be human.
As a desperate battle rages across the planet, Ursula must dig deep into her past if she is to save humanity’s future.
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