Cowl [Mass Market Paperback]

Neal Asher (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0765352796 | ISBN-13: 978-0765352798 | Publication Date: April 4, 2006

In the far future, the Heliothane Dominion is triumphant in the solar system, after a bitter war with their Umbrathane progenitors. But some of the Umbrathane have escaped into the distant past, where they can position themselves to wreak havoc across time and undo their defeat. The most fanatical of them is the superhuman Cowl, more monstrous than any of the creatures outside his prehistoric redoubt.

Cowl sends his terrifying hyperdimensional pet, the torbeast, hunting through all the timelines for human specimens. It sheds its scales -- each one an organic time machine -- where its master orders. Anyone who picks one up is dragged back to the dawn of time, where Cowl awaits. Then the beast can feed, growing ever larger . . .

In our own near-future, Tack is one of U-gov's programmable killers. When a scale latches onto him, his doom seems inevitable, but the Heliothane have other ideas: they can use Tack against Cowl. Tack is no stranger to violence, but the Heliothane, hardened in their struggle for humanity's very existence, have much to teach him. He will need it all for his encounter with Cowl.

Once one of Tack's targets, Polly escaped with her life when a torbeast scale snatched her. Now, like Tack, she must learn fast as she is dragged back to Day Zero. To cheat death again, she will have to help him save the human race.

With Cowl, Neal Asher, acclaimed author of Gridlinked and The Skinner, has created his most powerful novel yet.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Like "Kage Baker on steroids," says David Hartwell in his promotional letter, and indeed Asher's latest SF novel (after 2004's The Skinner) bears definite similarities to Baker's popular tales of the Company. Both involve near-immortal time travelers who pursue complex, often mysterious objectives. But where Baker tends toward the literary and satirical, Asher prefers over-the-top violence and pyrotechnic super-science. In the near-future, Polly, a prostitute, and Tack, a government-programmed killer, get caught up in a war fought by superhuman antagonists from the future, the Heliothane and the Umbrathane. Neither side is particularly sympathetic, but the latter group is allied with the monstrous Cowl, an even more advanced being that threatens all human life. Cowl has let loose the torbeast, a ravening interdimensional creature the size of a small planet, and the Heliothane have reprogrammed Tack to go back in time and assassinate the monster. Well-done battle sequences, serviceable characters and an old-fashioned sense of wonder help offset a sometimes overly byzantine plot and a too-abstract depiction of time travel. Overall, this is an excellent read and should increase the author's growing reputation. (May 18)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

"Readers with a taste for dense, high-concept science fiction will find much to admire in Neal Asher's Cowl. A time-travel novel of Byzantine complexity, Cowl describes a genocidal war between two post-human cultures (the Heliothanes and Umbrathanes) that takes place on a continuum running from prehistoric times to the remote future. . . .Asher is an accomplished storyteller who works some interesting -- and rigorously developed -- variations on that old science fiction standby, time travel. In Cowl , he has fashioned an enjoyable . . .narrative that offers a baroque portrait of a future society in which the human capacity for violence and destruction transcends the boundaries of time." --The Washington Post Bookworld

"Asher's third novel delivers a rapid-fire sf adventure that hurtles between, past, present, and future with the precision of a runaway roller coaster. Fans of techno-military sf should find this tale satisfying." -Library Journal on Cowl

"Neal Asher boldly reinvents time-travel adventure in Cowl. . . .Asher's writing…is full of heart-pounding violence and larger-than-life, many-mouthed monsters. In this bizarre world, Asher makes us care for a pair of hard-boiled characters who find self-improvement in their parallel plunges through time."--Rocky Mountain News

"The tale is done well. The exposition of the realpolitik that created Cowl and the vorpal (that is, life-generated) energies needed to move across timelines are integrated smoothly, and, in fact, it's a whopping good story."--San Diego Tribune

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Tor Science Fiction (April 4, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765352796
• ISBN-13: 978-0765352798
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,869,545 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Asher's take on time travel, May 16, 2005

By 

Matthieu Hausig (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cowl (Paperback)

Neal Asher has, in his Polity series, developed a reputation for writing well crafted, hyperviolent stories. In Cowl he ventures into the time travel vein. Time travel stories very often can't sustain enough believability to be immersive.
Asher manages to keep the storyline from devolving to this point although there are portions later in the novel when the time travel theme becomes a bit muddled. I particularly liked the concept of a probability slope where timelines that diverge from the main line require ever increasing amounts of energy to escape from.

In terms of the characters in Cowl, much of the humor found in Asher's other novels is missing. The world of Cowl is even grimmer than the Polity universe and it comes through in many of the characters. Because of this, I felt detached from the characters and for this reason Cowl gets 4 stars.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cowl, June 12, 2007

By 

P. N. Militch (Laurel, Md. USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cowl (Paperback)

A number of reviewers have commented that they found the story line very difficult to follow in this book. But, it's a story about time travel, where things change based upon what will happen in the future or will happen in the past. So of course it's tough to follow - that's the whole idea. I liked the book a great deal. I haven't found an Asher story yet that I don't like. And for those willing to work their way to the end, it does all come together.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Book in a Harsh World, November 28, 2004

By 

Ted Ward (Toronto, Ontario) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cowl (Hardcover)

I've read a couple of Asher's previous books, Gridlinked and Skinner, and enjoyed his rather vicious characters and settings. Cowl follows in these fine steps with an even harsher, indifferent future and a "survival of the fittest" world.

This novel involves progressive time travel from a near future back through to a time when life on earth was beginning with machinations by forces whose goals and intentions are unclear but gradually revealed. The historic times encountered are very interesting but tantalizingly brief as they left me wanting more.

My only criticism might be that the author could've created more human interest in these characters for me. I can't say I warmed up much to any of the characters, who remained rather cool and distant, but I suppose in some ways this added to the indifference of this book's universe to the individual character's existence and that of all life. I was at all times however curious to their fate and eager to follow their journeys.

The best aspect of Asher's novels to me are the great ideas and original plots. Most books have some echo of another book but I can definitely say that I've never come across the likes of Asher's stories anywhere else. The story's pace is fast and the plot wraps up very satisfactorily. All in all it's a very good book.