Tuesday, February 9, 2010

The Voyage of the Sable Keech / Neal L. Asher

The Voyage of the Sable Keech

by

Neal L. Asher

published by Pan Macmillan in 2006
read by Agamedes in April 2009
science fiction
book 2 in the Spatterjay / Polity universe

A great book: space opera with depth! The planet (Spatterjay) is full of incredibly violent wildlife. The humans have adapted to be suitably tough. There is a great range of other adapted humans including “zombies” whose original but dead bodies are kept going by machines and nanomachines. The few non-humans are as sympathetic (ie likable and unlikable) as humans. The violence is taken to such a ridiculous extreme that it becomes cartoonish and so acceptable... Anyway, most of the characters are immortal and recover quickly. It doesn’t take too long to catch up with the characters from the first book of the series; this book can be read alone. The good guys fight for niceness and the bad guys get their comeuppance but usually without death or even too much pain.

Agamedes' rating: 9 out of 10

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