In outer space you can never feel sure that your adversary is altogether human.
The runcible buffers on Samarkand have been mysteriously sabotaged, killing many thousands and destroying a terraforming project. Agent Cormac must reach it by ship to begin an investigation. But Cormac has incurred the wrath of a vicious psychopath called Pelter, who is prepared to follow him across the galaxy with a terrifying android in tow.
Despite the sub-zero temperature of Samarkand, Cormac discovers signs of life: they are two 'dracomen', alien beasts contrived by an extra-galactic entity calling itself 'Dragon', which is a huge creature consisting of four conjoined spheres of flesh each a kilometre in diameter. Caught between the byzantine wiles of the Dragon and the lethal fury of Pelter, Cormac needs to skip very nimbly indeed to rescue the Samarkand project and protect his own life.
Gridlinked is the first sci-fi thriller in Neal Asher's compelling Agent Cormac series.
The Line of Polity is the second novel in Neal Asher's popular Agent Cormac series.
Outlink station Miranda has been destroyed by a nanomycelium, and the very nature of this sabotage suggests that the alien bioconstruct Dragon - a creature as untrustworthy as it is gigantic - is somehow involved. Sent out on a titanic Polity dreadnought, the Occam Razor, agent Cormac must investigate the disaster.
Meanwhile, on the remote planet Masada, the long-term rebellion can never rise above-ground, as the slave population is subjugated by orbital laser arrays controlled by the Theocracy in their cylinder worlds, and by the fact that they cannot safely leave their labour compounds. For the wilderness of Masada lacks breathable air . . . and out there roam monstrous predators called hooders and siluroynes, not to mention the weird and terrible gabbleducks.
IS IMMORTALITY WORTH THE PRICE?
The savage ocean planet of Spatterjay draws visitors with very different agendas. Erlin is immortal and seeks a reason to keep living. Janer hosts a hive mind, which paid him to find this planet. And Keech is an agent of Earth who's been dead for seven hundred years - but still hunts a notorious criminal.
On Spatterjay's vast waterscapes, only the Old Captains risk the native life forms and their voracious appetites. However, they are now barely human. And somewhere out there Keech's target - the Skinner - runs wild. Keech pursues the Skinner for atrocities committed in a centuries-past war, fought with the alien Prador. But one of these Prador is fast approaching Spatterjay to exterminate witnesses to his own war crimes. And he won't spare its visitors.
The Voyage of the Sable Keech is the second book in Neal Asher's Spatterjay series, following on from The Skinner.
Sable Keech is a walking dead man. Was he resurrected because he was infected by the Spatterjay virus, or it took place late in a tank of seawater? Taylor Bloc wants to know the truth. He also wants more - adulation, power, control - and will go to any lengths to achieve them.
An ancient hive mind has sent an agent to this uncertain world. Does it merely want to obtain the poison 'sprine' that is crucial to immortality? Erlin, still faced with the ennui of immortality, is interrupted by an angry whelkus titanicus, and begins a strange journey.
Deep in the ocean the Spatterjay virus has wrought a terrible change that will affect them all. Something long-dormant is breaking free. And Sniper, its Warden, finally receives his new drone shell. It's better than his old one: powerful engines, more lethal weapons, thicker armour. He's going to need them.
WILL DEADLY SECRETS STAY CONCEALED?
Old Captain Orbus commandeered a ship to flee Spatterjay, desperate to escape the violent planet. Orbus's alien enemy, the Prador Vrell, is also moving on. The Spatterjay virus mutated him into something even more dangerous. And he's hunting the Prador King himself - who sought to kill him, to bury the secret of their similar transformations.
Orbus and Vrell clash in the Graveyard, a lawless zone where the Prador have seized a key space station. Official action by humanity or Prador would end peace, as a centuries-long cold war simmers. So Earth commands Orbus to destroy the station, even as the King recruits a monster to exterminate Vrell. But their actions will awaken an intelligence that annihilated civilizations, as it stirs after five million years . . .
The Line War is the fifth novel in Neal Asher's popular Agent Cormac series.
The Polity is under attack from a 'melded' AI entity with control of the lethal Jain technology, yet the attack seems to have no coherence. When one of Erebus's wormships kills millions on the world of Klurhammon, a high-tech agricultural world of no real tactical significance, agent Ian Cormac is sent to investigate, though he is secretly struggling to control a new ability no human being should possess . . . and beginning to question the motives of his AI masters.
Further attacks and seemingly indiscriminate slaughter ensue, but only serve to bring some of the most dangerous individuals in the Polity into the war. Mr Crane, the indefatigable brass killing machine sets out for vengeance, while Orlandine, a vastly-augmented haiman who herself controls Jain technology, seeks a weapon of appalling power and finds allies from an ancient war.
Meanwhile Mika, scientist and Dragon expert, is again kidnapped by that unfathomable alien entity and dragged into the heart of things: to wake the makers of Jain technology from their five-million-year slumber.
But Erebus's attacks are not so indiscriminate, after all, and could very well herald the end of the Polity itself . . .
The Soldier is the first novel in the Rise of the Jain series, by bestselling science fiction author Neal Asher.
Her mission is vital. Her failure is unthinkable.
A hidden corner of space is swarming with lethal alien technology, a danger to all sentient life. It's guarded by Orlandine, who must keep it contained at any cost - as it has the power to destroy entire civilizations. She schemes from her state-of-the-art weapons station, with only an alien intelligence to share her vigil. But she doesn't share everything with Dragon . . .
Orlandine is hatching a plan to obliterate this technology, removing its threat forever. For some will do anything to exploit this ancient weaponry, created by a long-dead race called the Jain. This includes activating a Jain super-soldier, which may breach even Orlandine's defences.
Meanwhile, humanity and the alien prador empire keep a careful watch over this sector of space, as neither can allow the other to claim its power. However, things are about to change. The Jain might not be as dead as they seemed - and interstellar war is just a heartbeat away.
War Factory is the second novel in the Transformation series, a no-holds-barred adventure set in Neal Asher's popular Polity universe.
One seeks judgement, another faces damnation and one man will have his revenge . . .
Thorvald Spear is losing his mind as he drowns in dark memories that aren't his own. Penny Royal, rogue artificial intelligence, has linked Spear with the stored personalities of those it's murdered. And whether the AI seeks redemption or has some more sinister motive, Spear needs to destroy it. He feels the anger of the dead and shares their pain.
As Spear tracks the AI across a hostile starscape, he has company. Sverl, an alien prador, has been warped by Penny Royal and hungers to confront it. But will the AI's pursuers destroy each other or hunt it together? Sverl's prador enemies aren't far behind either. They plan to use his transition to prove human meddling, triggering a devastating new war.
Clues suggest Penny Royal's heading for the defective war factory that made it. So allies and enemies converge, heading for the biggest firestorm that sector of space has ever seen. But will Spear secure vengeance for his unquiet dead?
Infinity Engine is the third and final novel in the Transformation series, by bestselling science fiction author Neal Asher, following Dark Intelligence and War Factory.
A man battles for his life, two AIs vie for supremacy and a civilization hangs in the balance . . .
Several forces now pursue rogue artificial intelligence Penny Royal, hungry for revenge or redemption. And the Brockle is the most dangerous of all. This criminal swarm-robot AI has escaped confinement and is upgrading itself, becoming ever more powerful in anticipation of a showdown.
Events also escalate aboard the war factory. Here Thorvald Spear, alien prador, and an assassin drone struggle to stay alive, battling insane AIs and technology gone wild. Then the Weaver arrives - last remnant of a race that died out two million years ago. But what could it contribute to Penny Royal's tortuous plans?
And beyond the war factory a black hole conceals a tantalizing secret which could destroy the Polity. As AIs, humans and prador clash at its boundary, will anything survive their explosive final confrontation?
Will humanity survive first contact?
The worlds of the Polity stretch from Earth Central into the unfathomable reaches of the galactic void. And when humanity finally encounters alien life - in the form of massive, hostile carnivores known as the Prador - there can only be one outcome. Total warfare.
Chaos reigns as, caught unawares, the Polity struggles to regain control. It must try and remake itself into a military society as starships clash, planets fall and space stations are overrun. But for Jebel Krong and Moria Salem, trapped at the centre of the action, this war is far more than a clash of cultures or technology versus brute force. This war is personal.
Prador Moon is one of Neal Asher's most explosive excursions into the Polity universe. It's also an action-packed prequel to the dramatic events in Neal Asher's Spatterjay novels.
In Neal Asher's The Technician, the Theocracy has been dead for twenty years, and the Polity rules on Masada - but it is an order that the rebels of the Tidy Squad cannot accept, and the iconic Jeremiah Tombs is top of their hitlist.
Tombs, meanwhile, has escaped his sanatorium. His insanity must be cured, because the near-mythical hooder, called 'the Technician', that attacked him all those years ago, did something to his mind even the AIs fail to understand. Tombs might possess information about the suicide of an entire alien race. It's up to the war drone Amistad to discover this information, with the help of an ex-rebel Commander, the black AI Penny Royal and the amphidapt Chanter.
Meanwhile, in deep space, the mechanism the Atheter used to reduce themselves to animals stirs from slumber and begins to power-up its weapons . . .
Their nemesis lies in wait . . .
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.
In this second volume of Rise of the Jain, Neal Asher takes us on a thrilling ride into interstellar politics and impending war. This is a novel set in Neal's popular Polity universe.
