Thursday, February 19, 2009

Prador Moon

Just finished reading this.
Short. Punchy. Multiple eviscerations. Neal Asher is known for his violent action scenes, but he takes gory and disturbing writing to a new level in this novel. This has at least as many entrail-littered pages as The Skinner. Tops.
Prador Moon covers first contact and some of the ensuing war with the Prador, a very nasty alien race of giant crustaceans. Fantastic! The Prador feature in several other of his novels, but this really fleshes out their culture and attitudes. (fleshes. out. yes!)
I was also very appreciative of reading more detail of the ubiquitous aug, the brain augmentation technology in use in the Polity. This novel lies a little in the past relative to most of the other Polity novels, so the augs were mostly a little less advanced than in other novels, but the description of their use in Prador Moon is brilliant and left me wanting one. More than usual.
Prador Moon covers one story from the beginning of the Prador war, and I would have liked a longer book with more coverage of the war, especially the mass thralling of humans hinted at in The Skinner. Perhaps this will come in a later novel?

Also, I've just found Neal Asher's blog here and am now a rabid Follower. Mr Asher, if you ever find yourself reading this, thank you for your novels, you are an SF God.

1 comment:

Neal Asher said...

Thank you very kindly, Owen!