Book Review: Polity Agent

Hey,

So I stayed up way too late last night reading the better half of Polity Agent by Neal Asher. This is the latest in the Ian Cormac series of books set in the far-future universe of the Polity. The Polity is basically the same kind of set-up as The Culture in Iain Banks's novels. You've got super-smart AIs who run a peaceful and prosperous empire and humans either play along and live in utopia or strike out on their own and make a hash of things.

So, yeah, this is the 4th book in the series and while there are flashes to bring you up to speed, it's probably for the best if you come to this one in its proper sequence, because it took me a couple of chapters to get everyone settled in my mind. As I've noted before, it's real, real hard to kill off a guy in Asher's books and everyone struggles to rise above being a bit part. Asher divides his time pretty evenly between major characters or groupings of characters, which is one of the reasons that compel you to keep reading way past your bedtime. This jumping around also keeps the action levels pretty high and the writing is pretty strong. I actually laughed out loud at a couple of humorous bits.

In the review for the previous book, I wondered aloud if the series was going to start hammering away at some of the bigger questions raised by the book's setting. To be fair, it's a bit of a losing proposition since humanity will either step up to Singularity and we couldn't imagine or explain what happens after that or they won't and the whole thing comes crumbling down. The third way is to just skate the edge and that's pretty much where the Polity has things siting. Direct human-to-AI synthesis is spectacularly fatal (although you might get a teleporter technology out of it) and the AIs seem unwilling to shed their human dependents and take off on their own. Still, this book takes a better stab at it than previous ones have.

Overall, it was a good read. I will say that the ending just kind of...ended without a huge amount of resolution, however the Polity now has a couple of new enemies that can actually put up a stiff challenge and it'll be interesting to see their future development.


later
Tom

Book Review: Polity Agent

Hey,

So I stayed up way too late last night reading the better half of Polity Agent by Neal Asher. This is the latest in the Ian Cormac series of books set in the far-future universe of the Polity. The Polity is basically the same kind of set-up as The Culture in Iain Banks's novels. You've got super-smart AIs who run a peaceful and prosperous empire and humans either play along and live in utopia or strike out on their own and make a hash of things.

So, yeah, this is the 4th book in the series and while there are flashes to bring you up to speed, it's probably for the best if you come to this one in its proper sequence, because it took me a couple of chapters to get everyone settled in my mind. As I've noted before, it's real, real hard to kill off a guy in Asher's books and everyone struggles to rise above being a bit part. Asher divides his time pretty evenly between major characters or groupings of characters, which is one of the reasons that compel you to keep reading way past your bedtime. This jumping around also keeps the action levels pretty high and the writing is pretty strong. I actually laughed out loud at a couple of humorous bits.

In the review for the previous book, I wondered aloud if the series was going to start hammering away at some of the bigger questions raised by the book's setting. To be fair, it's a bit of a losing proposition since humanity will either step up to Singularity and we couldn't imagine or explain what happens after that or they won't and the whole thing comes crumbling down. The third way is to just skate the edge and that's pretty much where the Polity has things siting. Direct human-to-AI synthesis is spectacularly fatal (although you might get a teleporter technology out of it) and the AIs seem unwilling to shed their human dependents and take off on their own. Still, this book takes a better stab at it than previous ones have.

Overall, it was a good read. I will say that the ending just kind of...ended without a huge amount of resolution, however the Polity now has a couple of new enemies that can actually put up a stiff challenge and it'll be interesting to see their future development.


later
Tom

Burning Replacements

Hey,

So today I got an unexpected package in the mail. It was a copy of the Burning Empires RPG and a note from designer Luke Crane that said:

"Hey, the first run of books had a batch with pages that tended to pull away from the spine. They weren't in danger of falling out, but it looked like total crap. Since you pre-ordered the game, have a free, better-bound copy of the book on us."

Now, I think Burning Empires has some flaws and it'd not terribly likely I'd run it again anytime soon. Still, I gotta hand it to Luke for going above and beyond in terms of customer service.

later
Tom

Burning Replacements

Hey,

So today I got an unexpected package in the mail. It was a copy of the Burning Empires RPG and a note from designer Luke Crane that said:

"Hey, the first run of books had a batch with pages that tended to pull away from the spine. They weren't in danger of falling out, but it looked like total crap. Since you pre-ordered the game, have a free, better-bound copy of the book on us."

Now, I think Burning Empires has some flaws and it'd not terribly likely I'd run it again anytime soon. Still, I gotta hand it to Luke for going above and beyond in terms of customer service.

later
Tom