Customer Reviews

Line War (Ian Cormac, Book 5)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First things first, let me say that Neal Asher is far and away one of the strongest (and my personal favorite) voice in science fiction today. He is a superb author, and since reading Gridlinked the first time, I've since devoured everything I've been able to get my hands on.

The polity universe is rich and encaptivating as always here. A bit of a disservice is done to Asher's normal standards though, just in the settings used. This book adds several pieces of information to our overall picture of that universe, and makes me want an Illustrated Guide to the Polity even more.

The characters are engaging, as we expect. The choices for the cast of this book are not the best from a readers perspective. We would much rather have *this* character filling a roll than *that* character, for instance.

This sums up the faults in this book, in fact. With this book, Asher has, more than ever before, started with a goal in mind, and then written toward that goal through most of the book. There comes a point in the latter half of the book that makes you really start to feel "Oh, THIS is where he started", and the rest is just exposition to get to that point.

Those who have read the previous 4 Cormac books will be sure to pick up this one - there is no doubt about that. You will enjoy the ride, and be amazed, if a little frustrated at some aspects of Line War. First time readers, as with all series, should start at the beginning (Gridlinked, in this case) - while a new reader could probably get into this book just fine, it certainly doesn't showcase Asher's traditionally strong points.

This book wraps up the overall story line we've seen build behind the scenes in the last 4 books - as with all good things that must come to an end, we, the readers, are bound to feel some extra disappointment. This serves to exasperate the problems arising from the choice to barrel to the end in this manner. I think the series may have been better served by having an intermediate book between 4 and 5 - again though, fans always wish for more.

In the end, this was a good book. Delivered by anyone but Asher, it would be a great book, but he has set the bar high for himself, and just failed to reach it for me with this one.

I'm still wildly looking forward to Shadow of the Scorpion though, and whatever else Asher has to offer. And I wouldn't have traded reading this book for anything, even if I wish the first half had been more enjoyable.

When you pick up a Neal Asher novel, you expect a lot of action, violence, gore, and mayhem. All of those things are available in abundance in his fifth Ian Cormac novel, LINE WAR. The war in question was joined at the climax of the previous novel, POLITY AGENT, when the forces of the Polity attacked the anti-human artificial intelligence (AI) Erebus. Erebus, it turns out, was responsible for delivering dangerous Jain technology to the mad scientist Skellor and the knowledge-hungry engineer haiman Orlandine, among others. Jain technology, the fruit of a society extinct for millions of years, offers great power to those who touch it, but it also has a hidden purpose--the total annihilation of all beings who utilize it. Erebus, which has itself harnessed Jain technology, hopes to destroy humanity through the propagation of the technology, and, if necessary, through military conquest ... of the sneakiest sort. When it begins its offensive with an attack on an obscure Polity world, Earth Central Security (ECS) Agent Ian Cormac is dispatched to find out what Erebus' game is. The more Cormac investigates, however, the more convinced he is that ECS and its allied AIs are not doing all they can to stop Erebus, and the more suspicious he is that preserving human life is not as high on their agenda as it should be.

As always, Asher skillfully portrays a not-so distant future in which humanity has mastered space travel and other advanced technologies, such as instant interstellar transport through "runcibles"; has spread to many, many solar systems; and lives alongside, interfaces with, in some cases aspires to be like, and is ruled by artificial intelligences. (While he doesn't explore many of the implications of humans being ruled by a benign dictatorship of the AIs, in LINE WAR he at least explores what the limits of that dictatorship ought to be.) He gives his work a convincing "hard" edge by being attentive to, e.g., the dynamics of temperature on a moon covered in methane oceans. He also gives his stories a visceral charge by, well, shooting, hacking and stabbing peoples' guts. He's also reasonably skilled as a storyteller, creating a compelling set of mysteries before, bit-by-bit, revealing what lies behind them.

Unfortunately, he's less skilled with character and dialogue, especially for his primary characters. Cormac and his sometime lover Mika are thinly drawn figures who are mainly vehicles for the story. Evil Erebus is a cartoonish bad guy, very reminiscent of the really dreadful central computer Omnius from the Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson "Dune" novels. The dialog between Cormac and Mika, between Mika and the bio-construct Dragon, and between Erebus and anybody is stilted, inane, and often laughable. This weakness is most evident early in the novel (for all except Erebus, who is awful throughout) when the action has not yet taken off. Oddly, secondary characters like Orlandine, the former AI Vulture, Mr. Crane, and the war drone Arach have more personality, snappier lines, and greater depth (though not by a huge amount) compared to the main characters.

The main disappointment of the novel is not that Asher continues to string us along with hints about Cormac's abilities and the agenda of Earth Central, because that's not what he does. Instead, he spills the beans, telling us what's really going on. Unfortunately, it's not all that exciting. Virtually everything turns out to be much more ordinary, dreary, and petty than we had expected. Furthermore, we're left wondering if there will be any more Cormac novels. Cormac (naturally) survives, but does anybody care where he goes from here?

In any event, fans of earlier novels in the series should certainly pick this one up and will enjoy it ... up to a point. Those unfamiliar with the series should start with GRIDLINKED.

Asher is the best space opera author currently working (although John C. Wright's Golden Age series is great too in a different way). It's not just seeing cyborgs fight alien nanotechnology (and many other permutations of hard SF superbeing conflict); it's that it actually makes sense when he does it. Gridlinked is not great, but the series picks up from there.

I am not going to go into a long review of the book. At this point after reading the previous 4 I can't really be objective. Yes at times you want him to reveal what Agent Cormac is really going to be, but this book does a decent enough job to give you an idea of who he is and why and what happens if you don't adhere to the strict moral code that exists for him. If you have enjoyed the previous Agent Cormac books I would recommend that you continue. If you are burned out and no longer enjoying them I would skip it, nothing new or revolutionary in this one to change your mind. I enjoyed the previous four and I enjoyed this one. Not too deep but there you go.

This is the fifth Ian Cormac novel, and really felt like a series conclusion. Its scope is massive, galaxy affecting, and its repercussions fleshed out without remorse. It's no secret than in this novel, millions and millions of people and sentient AI die, and many die gruesomely, graphically depicted. It's a great read, well written and well paced with plenty of large scale events throughout the novel. I particularly enjoyed the creation and deployment of the largest, most destructive weapon ever devised, outside of intentionally caused supernovae. It builds on the work in Prador Moon in this respect, another Asher novel I really, really enjoyed.
I also thought the development of Cormac in this novel was really cool. He was a lot more cynical and paranoid, and seemed quite pissed off much of the time. Of course, he has been through a lot in the series, so his character changes make perfect sense. Again, repercussions of this, relentlessly pushed to the end.
The end is completely satisfying. Many novels attempting such large scale really peter out at the end, but not this one. Asher spends a lot of time going over the events in glorious detail, from large explosions to the tiny communications between entities. Most of the hanging threads from the series are well tied up with explanations detailed. In particular, the Dragon character is really opened up.
Excellent.

[...]

read all 5 days in rapid succession. Liked the ending. Only concern is that there is sort of a disconnect about happened with this book and then the next series several hundred years in the future about the jain node threat.

Backing off the prior emphasis of big battles and baddie beasties, Asher takes a more direct, traditional approach to a novel- a plot. Similar in standard to Gridlink, where he first created his Ian Cormac series, Asher has decided once again to put his one-trick pony show off to the side while actually trying to wrap up the series once and for all. Granted, there must be blood and blasts somewhere in the novel for Asher-sake, but it's definitely toned down.

Whereas the last three books have seen a cavalcade of enemies, horrific animals and flora and a slow evolution of the Polity's relationship with Dragon, only now in Book Five does the Dragon/Polity relationship, the Jain/Dragon relationship and the Cormac/Earth Central relationship come into play. These three pillars of the plot foundation assure the long-term Asher reader (this being my eleventh to-date) a solid good read with many glimpses of truth in the relationships stated above.

My once hitch is my once held notion that the Jain technology was one with a ferocious appetite for submission and destruction; now in Book Five we see much of dead or hibernating Jain tech. All of this Jain is repeatedly described as coral-like structures, ad nauseum. Even the live Jain tech is always portrayed as silver tendrils. It would have been nice to see a change of vocabulary regarding these adjectives but Asher does ramp up the vocab throughout the novel, though not enough for having me reach for my dictionary.

Through all the wonderful things Jain tech can do, during the trials Cormac finds himself in with his new capabilities and at the all the points where the AIs bestow their wisdom and humor to the cast is where Asher finds his niche in Book Five here. From one toehold to the next, the reader to taken casually through the well-structured, well-plotted and well-defined novel which isn't too flashy or too blasé. Not quite a re-read but well worth it for any Asher fan following the series!

Best Neal Asher book I've yet to read. Balances intelligent, multi-faceted plot lines with quality, purposeful action. We see Cormac develop skills and newly emerging abilities only hinted at in earlier books. The majority of Asher's other main characters are featured here, too, with Mr. Crane finally fulfilling his potential. A great read that I had a hell of a time putting down.

Wow! I cannot say enough about the books by Neil Asher. This one was especially good because of the full character and plot development that has built up to this from his earlier novels. Pretty much all of the loose ends were tied up in this seamless, techno-action thriller. If you like the Takashi Kovacs novels (Richard Morgan) and the Hyperion books (Dan Simmons) then this will blow you away!! The series progression is great; but, you might want to read Shadow of the Scorpion prior to Gridlinked. Regardless, read them all.

This books ties up all the loose ends of the former polity series and is probably the best SF book I have read, well, since the last Asher book.
This guy is now writing the most intelligent action packed space opera of any working author. I like Asher better then Iain Banks, and that takes some writing ability. In this book nothing you previously thought was true is necessarily true, the guys who seemed to be good and benevolent may not be necessarily so, how the jain virus actually got into the polity universe,
how far Cormack's allegiance extends, what Mr.Crane (who for some reason I don't understand reminds me of the Undertaker, the wrestling fellow - maybe I am losing it), has turned into and who side he is on. If you have read the Asher polity series so far, you are nuts if you don't buy this.
I am now reduced to ordering his books from England, making his new books the most expensive SF books I've bought. But, by God, I loved this novel.