From 800 years in the future, a runcible gate is opened into the Polity and those coming through it have been sent specially to take the alien 'Maker' back to its home civilization in the Small Magellanic cloud. Once these refugees are safely through, the gate itself is rapidly shut down - because something alien is pursuing them. The gate is then dumped into a nearby sun. From those refugees who get through, agent Cormac learns that the Maker civilization has been destroyed by pernicious virus known as the Jain technology. This, of course, raised questions: why was Dragon, a massive biocontruct of the Makers, really sent to the Polity; why did a Jain node suddenly end up in the hands of someone who could do the most damage with it? Meanwhile an entity called the Legate is distributing pernicious Jain nodes ...and a renegade attack ship, The King of Hearts, has encountered something very nasty outside the Polity itself.
Polity Agent
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Neal Asher was born and bred and on the Essex coast, and still lives there. His previous novels include GRIDLINKED, THE SKINNER, THE LINE OF POLITY, COWL and BRASS MAN.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best Asher to date,
By
This review is from: Polity Agent (Ian Cormac, Book 4) (Hardcover)
I've enjoyed all of Asher's "Cormac" books. Fast and furious action with an unusual but believable setting. This book, the 4th in the series (Gridlinked, Line of Polity, Brass Man) is the best of the lot. Space opera and black operations come to a head with very violent results. The book reads like an express train with space battles, assasinations, intrigue and xenobiology gone amok on every page. I killed this book in 2 days (with every spare moment I could muster) and then read it all over to make sure I didn't miss anything. A must have.
Though he does re-cap, you should start at the beginning of the series. There's way too much that has gone on before that, if you're not aware of the previous story, will seem meaningless.
24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outrageously fun science fiction,
By
This review is from: Polity Agent (Ian Cormac, Book 4) (Hardcover)
This is the fourth and most recent Ian Cormac installment from Neal Asher. If you haven't read the first three yet then please, please, please take my advice and order them right away. You'll be delighted that you did. The previous books are, in order: Gridlinked, Line of Polity, and Brassman. Together with Polity Agent they form the core novels comprising Asher's "Polity Universe", a future where humanity has spread to the stars and found that there are lots of unpleasant surprises out there. These books do one of the better jobs in sci-fi today of thoughtfully exploring the consequences of developments in technology and science and from this raw material then extrapolating plausible and interesting future interstellar societies. This is what science fiction is all about and Asher does it very well indeed.
But then he goes and makes it deliciously fun! I am pretty sure that Neal Asher was one of those little boys who delighted themselves by dumping all their toys onto the floor, organizing them into big set piece battles, and then gleefully and violently crashing them into each other while making extremely loud and repetitive explosion noises, followed by rattling death-gurgles deep in his throat. He obviously had a blast because he is still doing it today, now using books as his playground and canvas. Neal takes his intricate and well-develeped future societies and then starts smashing them with all the toys his imagination can build. Rogue AI warships, wormhole technology, time travel, deadly nanotech "Jain" plagues, ruling artifical intelligences, enigmatic aliens the size of small moons, evil giant crab-like aliens that consider humans a delicacy, mysterious dead alien civilizations, sentient combat drones, combat robots, cyborgs, vicious and deadly xeno-widllife, deadly weapons and armaments, and the biggest problem of all: our own human nature. Crazy terrorists, crazier religious cults, arms dealers, designer drugs, criminals, the whole panoply of human ills are every bit as much of a problem in the future as they are now. Asher builds a fascinating and interesting conventional future and then delights in splashing it with explosions and blood as humans, AIs, aliens, cyborgs, terrorists, and deadly fauna battle it out in non-stop, adrenalin-fueled, free-for-all and devil-take-the-hindmost action. These books are gritty, violent, and deliciously fun. They also work exceptionally well because his character development is superb and he builds intricate, even byzantine plots, that provide completely justifiable and believable reasons for the splatter-fest. Asher is the master of the action-adventure novel, not because he crams the most over-the-top violence into his works, but because all the fireworks make sense and the contending parties are all acting in a sensible fashion according to their own world-view. He isn't just banging his toys into each other; he obviously also learned how to placate his parents with outlandish and plausible excuses for his violent little wars and now he treats us to both the fantastic wars of his fervent imagination and the incomparable story-telling that justifies it and makes us unquestioningly believe in him and his stories. In Polity Agent, Ian Cormac must once again contend with the spread of the civilization destroying "Jain" nanotechnology, we learn more of the Maker society that sent the enigmatic, moon-sized alien "Dragon" to human space, and also more about the equally enigmatic Horace Blegg. While some earlier mysteries are resolved, dangerous new foes are discovered as Asher continues his brinksmanship game of making each new novel a marvel of increasing complexity and deadlier, more dangerous enemies. Happily, nothing is ultimately resolved in this novel so we can look forward to more adventures. After all, the universe is a big place and there is always something new for Ian Cormac to contend with in his role as Polity Agent for Earth Central Security. New dangers that are invariably quicker, uglier, nastier, smarter, teethier, and more deadly than the last foe! For those of you familiar with Neal Asher, forget about the anomaly that was Prador Moon. Asher is back with grace, style, and panache and his devious imagination and twisted plots are everything you could wish for. For those of you new to Neal, grab the books above, and then when you have devoured them, go back and read The Skinner and Sable Keech, an alternate Polity Universe series that is, arguably, even more fun than the Ian Cormac books.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
great space opera,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Polity Agent (Ian Cormac, Book 4) (Paperback)
In Polity agent, Asher reunites us with the leading characters of his masterworks of science fiction which constitute the polity universe, Ian Cormack,
Horace Blegg, the A.I. Jerusalem and ECS et al. The gang is all back once again trying to analyze and somehow contain the Jain nanotechnology, which threatens to destroy all sentient life in the known galaxy. Once again Asher's storytelling is wonderful, fast moving, great characters and plausible, little riffs on quantum mechanics and a grand vision of Space Opera as it should be. We finally find out who Horace Blegg actually is, what ultimately became of the Brass Man and Dragon. I love the way Asher narrates his Polity A.I.,'s which rule the known human galaxy. Ashers gift for description and invention make this book well worth reading. I would highly recommend you read the novels in order to make sense of the entire wonderful over arch of the story and Polity mythopoeia. Well worth the time and money if you love the best of current space opera.
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