Jack Four

good story

Always a race to see who gets vaporised next. A twisty fight through multiple landscapes that keeps you guessing. A great read.

Was eager to read the next Polity novel and a new take on it's universe. A new style too writing in the first person. It was a enjoyable romp with our good friends the Prador. My only complaint...I missed more engagement with the Polity and the AIs. Must be the Iain Banks in me ... :-)

You know what you get with Neal Asher.If you want a pleasant romantic interlude, take a book of poetry on a picnic.If you want surreal, evocative and dreamy, go visit an art gallery.If you want SF non-stop action, with monsters and weapons tech falling out of the pages, Neal's your man!This is a story of a cloned Polity agent set in the backdrop of the 'Graveyard' and featuring most of the monsters and Polity tech of the previous 20 odd novels, novellas and collections. It is a stand alone novel (although some knowledge of the Polity universe would help with some of the references) and is non-stop action from start to finish, some of the action being of the gruesome, bloody kind.For fans of Asher, it is a no-brainer, and I am sure most fans already have it. For non-fans, it is an entertaining romp written by a present day master of SF.Just don't buy it expecting it to be Pride and Prejudice!

Been reading Asher for a lot of years, huge Dan of the Polity, Jain and Spatterjay thing. Few authors can make a first person action tale’ work’. This works very well indeed!

It brings genuine hurt to award only 3 starts to a polity novel I've waited through covid for but I found the first person narrative a little overdone and the twist no more than a gentle curve. The plot was well presented if a little thin and the descriptions of the medical technology and other polity toys were the usual great standard but overall I think I'm missing the dark AI humour and the stronger characters present in other novels. For all that it was enough to keep me engaged to the end and I did care about Jack beating Suzeal and looked forward to reading to the end despite its predictability.

As a single book its got merits over both dark intelligence and the rise of the jain, both of which dragged out. Book is missing any smart AIs and though the main character has got a strong 'implacable hero overcoming the odds' feel, the book lacks humour. The zoo dimension also feels a bit like 'lets see what i can reuse'. Still, an entertaining read

So, I am not pounding through it like previous books, but it is a new character, so it's always takes time.At the moment, I mixed feelings. I do like the grandeur and scope of the previous books. However, I do feel that a change of paces was needed, to get back a more Gridlinked level for a while.