Customer Reviews

Africa Zero

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Neal Asher's work is the perfect translation of comic book energy to big-screen-style narrative. This book, related in the deadpan first person of an Edgar Rice Burroughs type hero, pits a virtually unstoppable cyborg steward of a transformed far-future Africa against environmental vandals, ruthless corporate schemers, and sadistic religious fanatics, but as usual there is more to his larger-than-life characters than at first it seems. Harshly logical and gleefully brutal, this disarmingly juvenile but richly themed work carries forward the best pulp tradition with visceral, steamrolling conviction.

For those of you familiar with Asher's Polity universe the first thing you should know is that this a non-Polity story. The second thing you should know is that you simply won't care. This is trademark Asher all the way, simply resonating with the distinctive and familiar Asher voice. Asher is a natural story-teller and writes with an exuberance that defies comparison. No one crams as much energy, science, terror, adrenaline, blood, explosions, monsters, philosophy, politics, religion, technology, ideas, intelligence, and both the redeemably good and irredeemably evil into his books. The important thing though is no one makes you have a fraction of the fun Asher does when he writes. You ENJOY yourself when reading Asher!!! If there is anything wrong with this novella it is simply that it is a novella not a novel. I wish I could have kept reading indefinitely.

Africe Zero features an ancient cyborg who more less Lone Rangers, albeit somewhat reluctantly, around Africa keeping an eye on the local flora and fauna and the human enclaves that still exist. If you have read the polity books, just think "Golem". The resultings adventures feature all the action, violence, and blood spatters you learn to crave from Asher, the complex plot developments, and as many crazed and insane evil bigots and religious fanatics as your imagination could care to blow away. I suspect that this novella came before the polity novels because you do definitely see the seeds of the idea for the Golems and Dracomen featured there. I whole-heartedly recommend that you shell out the bucks for this one. Asher always delivers more adrenaline charged fun per dollar than any other writer out there.

An early work by Asher, Africa Zero comprises two novellas set in a distant future where the Collector, a lone cyborg with attitude, wages war on an army of religious fanatics. A nice brisk read, this book has the Asher trademarks of high octane action and plenty of big explosions. Fans of his Polity series will recognise the reptilian sauramen as forerunners of the dracomen in later books, but these prototypes are more entertaining. Few science fiction stories are ever set in Africa, let alone feature mammoths, glaciation, vampires and giant crocodiles as well, so this is one to remember.

Neal Asher has crafted a lovely universe in his 'Ian Cormac' action novels, but don't overlook this early gem. Africa Zero is a thoroughly creepy novella on a long-lived person who survived the changing environment of Earth. Rather than flee to the stars, this creature (a cybernetic human thousands of years old) stayed on the planet to watch his various creepy creations take over from man.

Given the time span in the two stories, I found myself interested in the events touched on as the centuries passed by. Of new populations of half-men created by foul DNA manipulation, or transposed populations as Europe was swamped, and yes, of the 'drowned God', a fascinating revision of old creation myths. Neal Asher's early work fascinates in a way that begs for more stories. Worth your time as an introduction to this fascinating author!

...but the fearsome genetically engineered vampires make amends. Interesting ideas of what Earth might be like after an environmental apocalypse.

This pair of novellas as a short novel is lacking in plot, but that is typical of Neil Asher books. Asher likes to describe action in minute detail, not interesting minute detail, but it seems like in every book some character has to move from one place to another place in an alien ship encountering resistance all along the way and we get to hear every last aching instant.

This book does not fail to provide this scenario.

I like the fact that the protagonist is an anti-hero with questionable motives, and people who read the Polity novels will be familiar with ideas that seem to be created here and expanded on in that universe.

I wish though that Asher would take his ideas and give more of a plot to sink one's teeth into. The end result reads a lot like the SF books I read as a teenager and are filled more with technojargon and action scenes than anything really in depth and interesting. Asher has some genuinely good ideas, but rarely bothers to explore them instead giving us chapters that detail how a character has moved from point A to point B. They add nothing to the story, they're just a flat description of events that result in the identical situation every time: unerringly the person trying to get from A to B arrives at B.

One thing that is irksome in the polity novels is how his description of alien ships always includes a size... in miles, and the aliens seem to really like round numbers. Aliens build to specifications such as 10 miles, and 50 miles in size. These earlier works use kilometers which to me at least feels more like it is set in the future, rather than reading some pulp science fiction from the 40s... but even so, things stick to the round sizes. I point it out because it seems to point to Asher's weak spot which is that the novels end up not being about anything... they are just a series of descriptions of objects and actions. What they add up to isn't anything in particular, there is no story and no plot.

The day is always saved. The plucky hero and his crew defeat the bad guys, and save the world, the galaxy or the universe. No surprises, and like these fights through the spaceships, there is no dramatic tension and no reason in the end to really care about the superman protagonist as he will destroy the villain no matter how weak or how superhuman he is.

Asher has some genuinely interesting ideas... and the beginning novels of the polity universe go a little bit further into them, they read like a novelist who had to refine his game in order to get published. Now that he is published, his books seem to fall into two groups: those written fast and loose to hit while the iron is hot, and the earlier stuff that could not get published or was published with a limited run and re-released now that his name is bigger.

Of the two groups, I do prefer the older stuff for interest. While Africa Zero is mediocre it's not bad, but I would recommend the Engineer Reconditioned which is actually quite good.

As mentioned in other reviews, a pair of early novellas. Imaginative, large ideas, as one would expect, but it does not have the carefully layered detail that typifies NA's later works. Fun, well worth reading, both for itself, and as an opportunity to mark the progression of the writer's craft. Another virtue: it's too short to keep you up all night, as can happen with his other work.

The Collector has seen more than 2000 years of human history unfold before his immortal eyes. In the distant past the Collector all but (save for his brain and spinal column) gave up his mortal form for a virtually indestructible artificial one. Taking place approximately 2500 years in the future, Africa Zero tells the tale of this Collector. His job is to preserve Earth's genetic diversity...and he will go to any length to do so, for the Collector has no qualms about ruthlessly eliminating anyone (or anything) that gets in the way of his task.

Africa Zero is well-drawn tale of a man (I guess cyborg would be more accurate in this case) who has seen Earth change -- both on the geological level and on the Human level -- through the course of more than twenty centuries. I very much enjoyed following the Collector on his journey through this future world. However, the story could have been a bit better on several points. First, I would have liked a bit more background on how the Collector got his job...who put the brain in the can, so to speak. Second, Africa Zero is divided into two distinct sections, most likely blended from two shorter stories to create one novella. The problem with this was that the transition between the two sections was a bit artificial, with some of the information that was given at the beginning of the book recited again with no clear reason why it should be. Lastly, I found the tale unnecessarily bloody at points. While I found the action scenes relevant to the story, the excessive gore was not. A little less gore, and a bit more character development would have been nice.

However, the flaws in the story take very little away from a compelling and believable future world, one in which the ultra-advanced technology of the distant past mingles with the savagery of an Earth which has lost its direction, with distinct factions of Humanity all trying to gain an advantage over the other.

This was my first sortie into a Neal Asher tale. Despite flaws, I enjoyed his overall concept and much of its execution, and will be picking up more of his stories in the future.

I read this book after having read many of Neal Asher's "Polity" books, and was not disappointed.

This book is an earlier work by Asher, and does not take place in his Polity universe, so don't expect any links or related story. However, if your a real fan of Asher's work you will probably enjoy this book quite a bit.

Its a short but action packed story about a "millenia" old cyborg named the Collector, who takes care of business on an Earth of the far future.

Full of Asher's bloody, action packed style of writing, this book will be a nice little sidetrack for the Asher fan who might be getting a little tired of the Polity.

Though very well written and engrossing, "Africa Zero" may be confusing to someone who has never read Neal Asher before. It's beginning (and end) is abrupt and overwhelming and the action is brutal and fast moving- the reader will be playing catch-up until half-way through the first story. If you know Asher's work, this is probably what you enjoy most about it but if you've never read anything by him you will probably be a bit confused. However, Asher (as usual) excells at his streamlined method of storytelling to throw the reader into the middle of the story and engross them, even if it's at a forced-march. Gory at times but also laugh-out-loud funny and full of great visuals, "Africa Zero" is not Asher's best work but is definitely one that reinforces Asher's stand-out status among modern sci-fi writers.