In this second book in Neal Asher’s transformation trilogy, Penny Royal continues to manipulate all the various players to its own ends. Sverl the transformed Prador is becoming steadily more human, especially in his thinking, Thorvald Spear is continuing to hunt for Penny Royal but is also beginning to doubt his motivation and realise that everything he does, and indeed his very existence, are probably all pretty much under Penny Royal’s control, Cvorn’s ambitions have him looking towards usurping the Prador kingship, and Captain Blite, well and truly caught up in Penny Royal’s machinations, is just trying to stay alive and see the show.
As always, Asher’s writing is good; his characters well drawn and convincing and his action equalling convincing and well-paced, but I feel he has tried to be a little too clever for his own good in this book. The plot is intricate and deliberately unfathomable; everything that happens is pretty much under the control of Penny Royal and Penny Royal isn’t giving away any hints of the future course of things or what its ultimate goals might be beyond the vague philosophical goal of redemption. This is rather unfortunate for the reader as it is almost impossible to see any purpose in much of the action and events and this in turn makes it very difficult to really care how those events will unfold.
I think the problem is that he has built up Penny Royal to an almost godlike status; it even takes to manipulating time, something that both the Prador and the almost omniscient Polity AIs are aware is possible but do fear to do. Given how obvious it is that Penny Royal is manipulating absolutely all the players in the story it is impossible to get away from the feeling that there is anything that anyone else can do of their own free will. And this in turn removes a large element of suspense; though the reader has little idea of Penny Royal’s ultimate plan, they also have little doubt about whether it will be achieved and that in turn makes the individual players’ own plans largely irrelevant and that potentially removes much of their motivation to continue reading. Certainly it did mine, making this by a big margin my slowest read in recent months.
Combined with a complete non-ending, no more significant than a chapter ending, in which none of the issues raised in this volume were resolved, this is probably one of the least satisfying Asher books I have yet read.
3/5 stars
As always, Asher’s writing is good; his characters well drawn and convincing and his action equalling convincing and well-paced, but I feel he has tried to be a little too clever for his own good in this book. The plot is intricate and deliberately unfathomable; everything that happens is pretty much under the control of Penny Royal and Penny Royal isn’t giving away any hints of the future course of things or what its ultimate goals might be beyond the vague philosophical goal of redemption. This is rather unfortunate for the reader as it is almost impossible to see any purpose in much of the action and events and this in turn makes it very difficult to really care how those events will unfold.
I think the problem is that he has built up Penny Royal to an almost godlike status; it even takes to manipulating time, something that both the Prador and the almost omniscient Polity AIs are aware is possible but do fear to do. Given how obvious it is that Penny Royal is manipulating absolutely all the players in the story it is impossible to get away from the feeling that there is anything that anyone else can do of their own free will. And this in turn removes a large element of suspense; though the reader has little idea of Penny Royal’s ultimate plan, they also have little doubt about whether it will be achieved and that in turn makes the individual players’ own plans largely irrelevant and that potentially removes much of their motivation to continue reading. Certainly it did mine, making this by a big margin my slowest read in recent months.
Combined with a complete non-ending, no more significant than a chapter ending, in which none of the issues raised in this volume were resolved, this is probably one of the least satisfying Asher books I have yet read.
3/5 stars
