The Soldier by Neal Asher

The Soldier by Neal Asher

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Jacket Blurb:  In a far corner of space, on the very borders between humanity’s Polity worlds and the kingdom of the vicious crab-like prador, is an immediate threat to all sentient life: an accretion disc, a solar system designed by the long-dead Jain race and swarming with living technology powerful enough to destroy entire civilizations.

Neither the Polity or the prador want the other in full control of the disc, so they’ve placed an impartial third party in charge of the weapons platform guarding the technology from escaping into the galaxy: Orlandine, a part-human, part-AI haiman. She’s assisted by Dragon, a mysterious, spaceship-sized alien entity who has long been suspicious of Jain technology and who suspects the disc is a trap lying-in-wait.

Meanwhile, the android Angel is planning an attack on the Polity, and is searching for a terrible weapon to carry out his plans?a Jain super-soldier. But what exactly the super-soldier is, and what it could be used for if it fell into the wrong hands, will bring Angel and Orlandine’s missions to a head in a way that could forever change the balance of power in the Polity universe.

In The Soldier, British science fiction writer Neal Asher kicks off another Polity-based trilogy in signature fashion, concocting a mind-melting plot filled with far-future technology, lethal weaponry, and bizarre alien creations.

Read for August book group.

I'm not even going to try and distill the premise of one of Asher's books. If you've read any of his work, you'll know what I mean. If you haven't ready any, and you enjoy grandiose space opera, engaging characters, and complex plots, I would suggest starting with Gridlinked or Prador Moon.

I also ended up reading this as an audio book, which I normally don' t do but I was pressed for time and thought "reading" it in the car and on the plane would help. I didn't finish in time for book group.

Nearly two weeks later, I realized I wasn't going to finish it. I lost interest. This installment felt like Asher took all the loose ideas bouncing around in head and crammed them into this book. One book group member said he had to keep pulling up wiki to figure out who was who and what book we read that character in. Not the best way to enjoy a book. We pretty much agreed, too much! It was like a great big huge info dump and the plot was just...lost.

We also wondered, not having finished the Transformation series, how a war drone ended up stapled to the Prador Captian's wall.

And when did Dragon become female?

And was the book title referring to just The Soldier? Or that all the characters in this book were soldiers in some aspect?

And don't get too attached to any one character - there is a good chance they'll be eliminated.

BUT! The Clade (sp?), is way cool.

So, not my favorite Asher book. Not the book groups favorite installment. We'll probably read the rest when they come out, because we really enjoy his books, just...not this one.



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