Great sequences, typical Asher flourishes, just when you think it can't get any bigger/worse/more complex. Not enough of a separate story for me and beginning to feel repetitive after these many years - worth reading but well short of his finest mark. ( )

I know it's Science Fiction, but some of the technology and some of the characters are just too fantastical for me. I will read the final book in the trilogy to complete the story arc, but I think need something else before I do! I also though that some of the sub-plots were just to give some of the characters something to do. A bit padded. ( )

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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

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:

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.

★★★★☆ ( )

For years now, Neal Asher has teased the concept of the Jain; a dead race whose remnant technology is a lethal threat to all that meddle with it. With this sub-series of his sprawling "Polity" universe Asher is finally putting some meat on the bones of this particular monster and I must say that the wait has been worth it, as Asher's long-term readers are going to be wondering how his cast of characters are going to get out from under this doom. The only real problem here is that while those folks familiar with Asher's concoctions of super science, political intrigue, body horror, and that aura which can only be called the Post-Human Blues, will eat this up, this novel will be totally impervious to the new reader. Those folks should start with the "Transformation" trilogy, which works well as an introduction to Asher, and I still think is probably the man's best writing to date. ( )

This is something quite amazing.
And when I say quite, I mean, "HOLY S*** what just HAPPENED here?"

It's been a while since I sat down to read SF expecting and eventually receiving a whole AWE effect. This is wide-brained high-tech imagination at its best, building on all the major developments and changes from all his previous books, giving us such massive scope and terror that both the combined might of the Polity AND the Prador are totally freaking out.

It's the Jain, folks. Their nanotech, just a minor sub-sentient bonder of biology and tech that seems so useful and uber-powerful on the surface, is designed to fulfill all your dreams. Too bad it's a tool designed to wipe out every intelligent race it ever comes into contact with, right? Old news from the previous books.

Unfortunately for everyone alive in this later tale, and despite some seriously major Space-Opera military improvements, the combined resources of all kinds of "people", be they Golems, hive minds, AI ships, Prador, Prador-Skatterjay, Human-Skatterjay, Haimans, or Prador-AIs, neither biological transformation or truly fantastic tech OR an old offshoot of the original Jain is quite able to handle this.

In fact, all of life is hopelessly outclassed.

This book is a cumulation of everything, but more than that, it's all battle, strategy, seeming success and bitter defeat. :)

I feel their horror, their desperate hope, and I'm left splattered on the floor.

This is Asher at the top of his game. :)
( )