Aliens, technology, vast space ships, warfare and politics - this belongs in the guilty pleasure category for me. This is my second Asher novel I think - and while I enjoy the pacy action, multiple plot lines, impossibly cool gadgets and mind-bending extraterrestrial phenomena, it isn't quite up to Iain Banks' genius. In particular, the cast of thousands becomes very difficult to keep track of, and the technologies and concepts are sometimes introduced with little explanation or reminder. And I suppose I'm also starting to want a little more development and depth of character from Asher's hero, Agent Cormac - perhaps that comes in later books in the series. All minor complaints, but they add up to minus one star. ( )

the quality of the writing has really improved since the first book. ( )

Good addition to the series. More weirdness and crazy scary lethal creatures, gabbleducks, heroyns and hooders, plus some big reveals on Jain technology.

Every book in this series has the same sort of multi person viewpoint switching, plotlines that don't quite make sense, and AIs that are godlike but not really. It isn't at all clear through the whole thing why humans are involved at all. Other than that, great story. ( )

Meh, kind of ok, but there's little character engagement and that makes it hard to become engrossed. We keep jumping from character to character with little clear marking which doesn't help. Cormac has remained unlinked which kind of worked as an excuse for the first book, but isn't so relevant here. Having released the maker and dealt sort of honourably with the dragon, Cormac is the ETC's goto person whenever their might be aliens around - we get a another new one in this book the Jain. Instead of some vast being this is a distributed threadlike thing thought to be extinct, but a bio-technologist has been exploring some options on a world not quite within the borders of the Earth's AI controlled Polity. But Agents can go anywhere.

There was a some fairly tenuous linking to get Cormac out to where most of the action takes place, a random non-oxygen world controlled by a religious sect, with slaves living on adapted technology to survive while they struggle to produce enough goods for the church. The polity doesn't like to intervene unless asked, and people won't ask what they don't know exists. Everythign follows fairly predictably from there, then the Dragon and the Jain turn up and there's a big fight for far too many pages, and Ian hasn't died yet.

Most people use 'augs' as supplimentary computing devices, like an embedded phone. In the pervious book there'd been a new one more bio-tech than hardware, owned by Dragcorp. Unsurprisingly this had been subverted by the Dragon alien. Now however it appears the dragon wasn't that involved with them and the Jain is instead, which didn't make much sense either. But I don't care neough about any of the characters to follow this series any further to find out. ( )

This is one great Ian Cormac story. It is the second in the series, not counting the prequel (Shadow of the Scorpion). Although pretty lengthy (650 pages) it kept my interest all the way through. Lots of battle scenes, technology, cool weapons, deadly flora and fauna, interesting cast of characters (many of whom are brought over from the previous book in the series). I loved it. Highly recommended. ( )