Praise for The Skinner
“An exhilarating tour through one of the most ingeniously, elaborately deadly worlds since Harry Harrison invented Deathworld.” —Locus
“Dune meets Master and Commander.” —Entertainment Weekly
General Praise for Neal Asher:
“Neal Asher’s books are like an adrenaline shot targeted directly for the brain.” —New York Times bestselling author John Scalzi
“With mind-blowing complexity, characters, and combat, Asher’s work continues to combine the best of advanced cybertech and military SF.” ?Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Asher is a modern master of sci-fi.” —Starburst magazine
“A wide-screen special-effects extravaganza, a space opera featuring gods and monsters . . . Doc Smith and Olaf Stapledon in a blender, turned up to eleven, with the contents splattering across the ceiling.” ?Russell Letson, Locus
“Asher has an amazing talent for world-building, for writing larger-than-life characters, for weaving gripping plots and for imagining exotic alien races and wonderful technologies. Huge ships! Big weapons! Space battles! Ground battles! Treason! Revenge! This is New Space Opera at its best.” —Sense of Wonder
“Hardboiled, fast-paced space opera . . . Asher’s books are similar to the world of Iain M. Banks’ Culture universe, but the Polity is arguably a much darker and more vicious environment—and all the better for it.” —The Register
Description
The Skinner is the first book in Neal Asher's Spatterjay series set in a lethal waterworld.
To the remote planet Spatterjay come three travellers with very different missions. Janer is directed there by the hornet Hive-mind; Erlin comes to find the sea captain who can teach her to live; and Keech - dead for seven hundred years - has unfinished business with a notorious criminal.
Spatterjay is a watery world where the human population inhabits the safety of the Dome and only the quasi-immortal hoopers are safe outside amidst a fearful range of voracious life-forms. Somewhere out there is Spatterjay Hoop himself, and monitor Keech cannot rest until he can bring this legendary renegade to justice for atrocious crimes committed centuries ago during the Prador Wars.
Keech does not realize that Hoop's body is running free on an island wilderness, while his living head is confined in a box on an Old Captain's ships. Nor does he know that the most brutal Prador of all is about to pay a visit, intent on wiping out all evidence of his wartime atrocities. Which means major hell is about to erupt in this chaotic waterscape.
Reviews
Praise for The Skinner
“An exhilarating tour through one of the most ingeniously, elaborately deadly worlds since Harry Harrison invented Deathworld.” —Locus
“Dune meets Master and Commander.” —Entertainment Weekly
General Praise for Neal Asher:
“Neal Asher’s books are like an adrenaline shot targeted directly for the brain.” —New York Times bestselling author John Scalzi
“With mind-blowing complexity, characters, and combat, Asher’s work continues to combine the best of advanced cybertech and military SF.” ?Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Asher is a modern master of sci-fi.” —Starburst magazine
“A wide-screen special-effects extravaganza, a space opera featuring gods and monsters . . . Doc Smith and Olaf Stapledon in a blender, turned up to eleven, with the contents splattering across the ceiling.” ?Russell Letson, Locus
“Asher has an amazing talent for world-building, for writing larger-than-life characters, for weaving gripping plots and for imagining exotic alien races and wonderful technologies. Huge ships! Big weapons! Space battles! Ground battles! Treason! Revenge! This is New Space Opera at its best.” —Sense of Wonder
“Hardboiled, fast-paced space opera . . . Asher’s books are similar to the world of Iain M. Banks’ Culture universe, but the Polity is arguably a much darker and more vicious environment—and all the better for it.” —The Register
