The Skinner

Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: I read a LOT of fantasy and science fiction. It isn't easy to please me. I enjoyed the hell out of this book! It really is a lot of fun. Neal Asher has created a macabre world that easily rivals anything created by Neil Gaiman or China Mieville. Sniper is one of my favorite fictional characters EVER. Totally thrilling.

Rating:
Summary: excellent action-packed adventure science fiction thriller
Review: Mostly a water planet, Spatterjay has Earth-like gravity with a breathable atmosphere, but the planet is overrun with hostile native life forms. There is nothing remotely similar like them in the known galaxies. Each inhabitant contains a virus that turns them into nearly invincible creatures, but at a cost. Once the virus has you, you must remain native or die. Overwhelmingly most of those few humans who reside here are infected; for those who are not they have a slim chance of survival.

Three off-worlders arrive that will shake the planetary order. Once a resident of Spatterjay, Erlin wants to die. Her only hope to live rests with her former lover superhuman Old Captain Ambel, if she can find him and he gives her the will to live. Deceased police monitor turned cybernetic cop Keech seeks the abusive psychotic murderers who supported the vicious Prader in the great war seven centuries ago. On a top-secret mission, Janer serves as eyes and ears for the Hornet Hive. These three and others including a rogue Prader come together on an island that is home of a horror that should frighten all of them, the Skinner.

As he did with the exciting GRIDLINKED, Neal Asher furbishes an exhilarant action-packed adventure science fiction thriller. The Spatterjay escapades hook the readers as they become acquainted with the various players, species, monsters that occupy this feral orb. This is defiantly not Kirk's Star Trek, as readers will quickly understand the underlying theme of atrocities caused by species virus or sentient. The final confrontation on Skinner's Island will have fans wondering how Neal Asher will top this jaunt into a wild world.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: excellent action-packed adventure science fiction thriller
Review: Mostly a water planet, Spatterjay has Earth-like gravity with a breathable atmosphere, but the planet is overrun with hostile native life forms. There is nothing remotely similar like them in the known galaxies. Each inhabitant contains a virus that turns them into nearly invincible creatures, but at a cost. Once the virus has you, you must remain native or die. Overwhelmingly most of those few humans who reside here are infected; for those who are not they have a slim chance of survival.

Three off-worlders arrive that will shake the planetary order. Once a resident of Spatterjay, Erlin wants to die. Her only hope to live rests with her former lover superhuman Old Captain Ambel, if she can find him and he gives her the will to live. Deceased police monitor turned cybernetic cop Keech seeks the abusive psychotic murderers who supported the vicious Prader in the great war seven centuries ago. On a top-secret mission, Janer serves as eyes and ears for the Hornet Hive. These three and others including a rogue Prader come together on an island that is home of a horror that should frighten all of them, the Skinner.

As he did with the exciting GRIDLINKED, Neal Asher furbishes an exhilarant action-packed adventure science fiction thriller. The Spatterjay escapades hook the readers as they become acquainted with the various players, species, monsters that occupy this feral orb. This is defiantly not Kirk's Star Trek, as readers will quickly understand the underlying theme of atrocities caused by species virus or sentient. The final confrontation on Skinner's Island will have fans wondering how Neal Asher will top this jaunt into a wild world.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Great Fun
Review: One of the best Sci-Fi books I've read in a long time.

Written in a style that will appeal to many types of reader, it has aspects of Clive Barkers ability to create a believable environment, amalgamated with an easy readability which reminds me of excitedly reading old Spiderman comics!

The reader learns about the characters, rather than is told about them, a subtlety I enjoyed noticing, almost as if the people you were reading about were dependant on you reading more for them to evolve.

The language is strong and believable, and a dark humour runs throughout the story which at times is Tarentino-esk. I can't fault this book at all. Well worth a read!

Rating:
Summary: A Fascinating Tale of a Weird World
Review: Science fiction (as other genres) is often very poorly done if written by someone who fails to build a consistent story. The story can be quite improbable, yet hold together quite well if well constructed. Neal Asher's new book "The Skinner" is just such a well structured story. As a biologist who likes a good tale of strange planets and creatures, I was quite pleased to find this riveting tale. The book has something for every sci fi fan- a strange world with oceans full of weird predators (not totally unlike our own, but perhaps a bit more dangerous!), alien minds controlling or communicating with humans and machines, galactic conspiracies, viruses that cause infected organisms to be more resistant to injury, a cast of characters with their own secrets, and nearly indestructible sea captains who are the survivors from a human slave industry based on a war between quite different galactic civilizations. The founder of that illegal activity, the space pirate Jay Hoop, has become (after 700 years) a very dangerous outlaw indeed- the Skinner (I won't describe this entity further as it might spoil the reader's fun!) He and his surviving associates are the targets of a former warden (Keech) who was killed by one of them and was "revived" as a sort of half-living reification. His mission is to finish off the last of the outlaws, who were all condemned to death. He is aided in part by a woman (Erlin) who is searching for one of the old captains (Ambel), and a former indentured slave (Janer) to the hive mind of intelligent earth hornets who carries two of the hornets with him. Add assorted Old Captains, various mercenaries, animated sails, giant leeches and numerous others, and you get a complex weave of very evocative interactions.

This is not simply another in a series of spin-offs from major movies or TV scripts (a pet peeve of mine) but a full blown hard-core sci fi masterpiece in the tradition of Van Vogt (although perhaps with a bit more logic than some of his tales). It holds together well and the pieces of plot spin toward each other in a structured fashion, making you nearly believe in the strange happenings on the eccentric world called Splatterjay. I recommend it as a rousing good tale of a seemingly almost possible world.



Rating:
Summary: Good, once you get into it.
Review: The beginning nearly made me drop it, though. The conversations were stunted and broken, but slowly a story comes emerges and it turns out a worthwhile read.

Rating:
Summary: Good gory science fiction
Review: The Skinner is based on the premise of a world where virtual immortality is just a leech bite away. A virus which allows the everpresent leeches' victims to regenerate nearly any injury gives the human inhabitants of the planet near indestructibility and massive strength as long as they can survive the boredom of living past several centuries and eat enough non-native food to keep themselves from going fully native as with the book's namesake.
Into this well realized ecology come some off-worlders that get thrown into a plot that involves the original criminal gang that came to the planet and a repugnant alien with a penchant for rotten human flesh.
The Skinner is a fast paced story with some entertaining characters and tons of action presented in vivid, gory detail. This isn't a philosophical novel postulating on how the future will shape society. Instead, the Skinner provides a rich visceral adventure with plenty of twisted humor all rushing towards an explosive conclusion.