Teaser

Spatterjay is a dangerous world, and no place is more dangerous than the oceans. If the local wildlife is not enough to kill you, those who ply their trade on the waters surely will . . .

Review

There are many authors that I enjoy reading, and there are many that I, for one reason or another, don’t get along with so well. In between these polar opposites there are authors I can appreciate, even if I don’t count myself as a fan. Sitting outside of this are another brand of authors. The ones who entertain me in one chapter and infuriate me with the next. The ones who are so variable in their output that I simply can’t put my finger on whether or not I want to keep reading. Neal Asher is one of these authors.

There is so much about the Polity universe that I like. The broader ideas of a les-than-perfect human civilisation guided by artificial intelligence is a great one. That’s why I started my Polity journey with Dark Intelligence. The Voyage of the Sable Keech is not about this element, but it does dive deeply into the weirder aspects of Asher’s creation. All too often in science fiction, aliens come across as boringly human. No such problem here. Asher’s aliens are utterly inhuman. There are parasitic lifeforms that seek to enslave everything they encounter, things called sails that seem to be sentient sheets of skin, and more whelks than you can shake a stick at. It’s a very organic novel, with the biosphere of Spatterjay being detailed in a series of in-universe texts at the start of every chapter. There are times when the weirdness gets a bit much for my tastes, but it’s mostly well done.

The problem I have is not one of content, but one of tone. I walked away from modern fantasy when grimdark became the flavour of the day all year round. Asher’s work slides in neatly alongside those books. The Polity universe is a spiky one, full of razor-sharp barbs. No one in this universe has a moment’s happiness, save that which comes at the expense of someone else’s life. everyone is out for themselves. There are people who have been brought back from the dead and now crave the one substance in the universe still capable of killing them. Poison is used as currency. It is beyond grimdark. It’s nihilism. There’s no point to anything. Therein lies the source of my frustration.

All of these leads to a book that has me thoroughly confused about how I feel. It’s not as drearily bleak as The Departure, but there’s an underlying nastiness that I just don’t get along with. This book is poorly labelled, but is the second in a trilogy. It inspires me neither to pick up the prior nor the next volume. And yet . . . And yet I can’t completely rule out a return to Asher, because there are those vivid horrors. There are interesting ideas. There is, in spite of what his universe suggests, still hope that there’s something better out there.

Book Stats

• Part of the Polity universe
• The Spatterjay Trilogy (#2)
• Published by Tor in 2006
• 584 pages