Skinner: A Spatterjay Novel (Spatterjay 1) [Paperback]

Neal Asher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 21, 2009 | Series: Spatterjay 1

To the remote planet Spatterjay come three travellers with very different missions. Janer is directed there by the hornet Hive-mind; Erlin comes to find the sea captain who can teach her to live; and Keech - dead for seven hundred years - has unfinished business with a notorious criminal. Spatterjay is a watery world where the human population inhabits the safety of the Dome and only the quasi-immortal hoopers are safe outside amidst a fearful range of voracious life-forms. Somewhere out there is Spatterjay Hoop himself, and monitor Keech cannot rest until he can bring this legendary renegade to justice for atrocious crimes committed centuries ago during the Prador Wars. Keech does not realise that Hoop's body is running free on an island wilderness, while his living head is confined in a box on an Old Captain's ships. Nor does he know that the most brutal Prador of all is about to pay a visit, intent on wiping out all evidence of his wartime atrocities. Which means major hell is about to erupt in this chaotic waterscape.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With his second novel (after 2003's Gridlinked), a rousing space opera, Asher takes us to Spatterjay, a deadly planet reminiscent of that in Harry Harrison's 1960 classic Deathworld. Spatterjay has Earth-equivalent gravity and a breathable atmosphere, but it overflows with inimical life forms, from gruesome leeches that grow to the size of sharks to horrific glisters, gigantic shellfish that will eat anything. Worse still, all of Spatterjay's life forms are infected with a virus that makes them virtually invulnerable to harm. Most of the few human inhabitants are also infected with the virus. Ruling loosely over the world are the superhumanly strong Old Captains, who spend their days aboard ships fishing the planet's dangerous waters. Three off-worlders land on Spatterjay: the depressed Erlin, who has returned after many years to find Ambel, an Old Captain whom she hopes will give her a reason to go on living; Keech, a long-dead former police monitor kept cybernetically alive who hopes to hunt down the last of a group of murderous pirates; and Janer, essentially a tourist who acts as eyes and transport for a hive mind. Unbeknownst to the three, however, other more unsavory intelligences, some human, some alien, are gathering with evil intent. Though his fiction is less thoughtful than that of Ken MacLeod, Iain M. Banks and some of the other top British genre writers, Asher will definitely appeal to connoisseurs of sophisticated adventure-oriented SF.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Three travelers land in the Dome on Spatterjay: Janer, who works for a hornet hive mind; Erlin, who has the Spatterjay virus, which makes the infected practically immortal, and is looking for Ambel, an old captain; and Keech, centuries dead but still pursuing his mission to punish Hoop's crew. Hundreds of years ago, there was a war with the alien Prador, who use human "blanks" as their motile units, and Hoop and his crew, original Spatterjay settlers, provided the Prador with blanks infected with the virus and tougher than the average human. Rebecca Frisk, Hoop's former mistress, is also on Spatterjay, transported by the Prador (so they're back in the picture, too), to kill Keech and find what's left of Hoop--the head of the Skinner, which is part of Ambel's cargo. The Prador just aim to kill every witness to their actions during the war. In a massive showdown at Skinner's Island, old battles are finally resolved. Throughout, Asher beautifully realizes the background to this wild adventure. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 583 pages
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan (December 21, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0330512528
• ISBN-13: 978-0330512527
• Product Dimensions: 1.8 x 5.2 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,514,236 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating Tale of a Weird World, February 5, 2005

By 

David B Richman (Mesilla Park, NM USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Skinner (Spatterjay, Book 1) (Hardcover)

Science fiction (as other genres) is often very poorly done if written by someone who fails to build a consistent story. The story can be quite improbable, yet hold together quite well if well constructed. Neal Asher's new book "The Skinner" is just such a well structured story. As a biologist who likes a good tale of strange planets and creatures, I was quite pleased to find this riveting tale. The book has something for every sci fi fan- a strange world with oceans full of weird predators (not totally unlike our own, but perhaps a bit more dangerous!), alien minds controlling or communicating with humans and machines, galactic conspiracies, viruses that cause infected organisms to be more resistant to injury, a cast of characters with their own secrets, and nearly indestructible sea captains who are the survivors from a human slave industry based on a war between quite different galactic civilizations. The founder of that illegal activity, the space pirate Jay Hoop, has become (after 700 years) a very dangerous outlaw indeed- the Skinner (I won't describe this entity further as it might spoil the reader's fun!) He and his surviving associates are the targets of a former warden (Keech) who was killed by one of them and was "revived" as a sort of half-living reification. His mission is to finish off the last of the outlaws, who were all condemned to death. He is aided in part by a woman (Erlin) who is searching for one of the old captains (Ambel), and a former indentured slave (Janer) to the hive mind of intelligent earth hornets who carries two of the hornets with him. Add assorted Old Captains, various mercenaries, animated sails, giant leeches and numerous others, and you get a complex weave of very evocative interactions.

This is not simply another in a series of spin-offs from major movies or TV scripts (a pet peeve of mine) but a full blown hard-core sci fi masterpiece in the tradition of Van Vogt (although perhaps with a bit more logic than some of his tales). It holds together well and the pieces of plot spin toward each other in a structured fashion, making you nearly believe in the strange happenings on the eccentric world called Splatterjay. I recommend it as a rousing good tale of a seemingly almost possible world.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Complex, Humorous, Planetary Narrative..., July 6, 2005

By 

James Neville (Katy (Houston), TX) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Skinner (Spatterjay, Book 1) (Hardcover)

This is the first Neal Asher book I've read and I look forward to reading more. "The Skinner" caught my fascinated interest with several themes and multiple characters and storylines.

If humans could be truly long-lived, how would they deal with getting BORED? The inhabitants of the Skinner world include human "old captains" who "live into the calm". The "juniors" who crew with them are those who've only lived a few centuries!

The native life of the Skinner world is anything BUT calm. Is there something beyond mindless feeding frenzies up and down the food chain of life?

There's an overall plot with a satisfactory conclusion. It comprises MULTIPLE story lines and characters, including men, women, articial intelligences, and aliens. These characters are variously heroes, bad guys, really bad guys, and ones you're not quite sure about.

There's plenty of humor in the narrative. I like it because it's a complex, humorous, planetary narrative that includes just a bit of thinking. I guess I'd tell more of the story line but what mattered to me most is the creative structure and good-natured feel of this book.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderfully inventive, superbly crafted tale., August 8, 2007

By 

Peter Venetoklis (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Skinner (Spatterjay, Book 1) (Paperback)

Rare is the book that immerses me as fully as this brilliant novel did. In The Skinner, Asher tells a stand-alone tale crafted within the future universe he has envisioned. The tale takes place on a rather savage world, Spatterjay, where a particular virus creates incredible regenerative and other effects in all the organisms it infects. This virus happens to work on humans as well as the local fauna, and Asher explores the implications of his creation quite fully.

The plotting and pacing are superb, the various storylines, each attached to one of the central characters, mesh and interweave splendidly, and the story progresses steadily, cleanly and quickly, without a single lull in the narrative, to a satisfying and well-conceived conclusion. Along the way, Asher treats us with great humor, well-conceived speculations regarding what it actually might mean to live hundreds of years in perfect health and fitness, some truly horrifying and shudder-inducing actions by humans and non-humans, and (my favorite character of all), a very old, battle-hardened and -scarred, sarcastic and extremely clever combat android/artificial intelligence.

While there is some background and comfort with the "universe" Asher created to be found in reading his earlier offering, "Gridlinked," it is not at all necessary for the full enjoyment of this novel. I heartily recommend The Skinner.