To end on a happy note: what's probably my favorite line (one of them, at least) comes in one of my favorite sections (the header of Ch.20 about why the Singularity sucks and why, even if AIs could zip off into the nerd rapture, they wouldn't and going on to compare humans): 'Ask then why a human, capable of learning verbatim the complete works of Shakespeare, instead drinks a bottle of brandy, then giggles a lot and falls over.Tim hill Tim Hill's signs are already quite noticeable around Bearden with his Hatcher-Hill commercial real estate and development work, and now he hopes to be even more visible as a community volunteer. (Not that I object to other, isolated, 'Polity Agent' adventures like I gather Shadow of the Scorpion was/will be.) But I sure hope v5 ends the series in style because I feel like it's past time to do so. Probably not true, but that it could even cross my mind is not a great sign.īut, like I say, Erebus and its style of combat and that incredible, long, sustained, gripping finale was pretty amazing.

Maybe the Makers were intended to be the actual primary antagonist of a trilogy and it was switched to rogue AIs to stretch it out to more and, since quartets are lame and hardly worth the switch, it became five even if there isn't much material for five. It felt like Asher might have had a trilogy in mind and, prior to either starting or finishing the third, he decided to stretch it to five. Now to post about the fifth and final book in the series, which I've just finished reading. This series successfully melds together the invented science with the story, so while the wide range of technology might be seen as shovelling in the shiny stuff (as some Fantasy authors do with magic just to up the stakes, but at the cost of weakening the logic), here the variety is meaningful and not random, in spite of the wide ranging imagination deployed. Something I haven't mentioned before, but should have.

Even so, and as with its predecessors, the book has its own arc and so could - if one really wanted to spoil the overall experience - read it as a standalone. It becomes ever more clear that the author is building up to a big climax. I can't think of anything I didn't like and would recommend it to anyone (unless they truly, hate multiple PoV characters in a chapter), but suggesting that they read books I, II and III first ( Gridlinked, Line of Polity and Brass Man respectively). Apologies if there's another thread dealing with this, the fourth of Neal Asher's Ian Cormac series.Īgain, the author ups the stakes and the quality of the story in this book.

Polity agent