Product Description

The Polity is under attack from a ‘melded’ AI entity with control of the lethal Jain technology, yet the attack seems to have no coherence. When one of Erebus’s wormships kills millions on the world of Klurhammon, a high-tech agricultural world of no real tactical significance, agent Ian Cormac is sent to investigate, though he is secretly struggling to control a new ability no human being should possess . . . and beginning to question the motives of his AI masters.

Further attacks and seemingly indiscriminate slaughter ensue, but only serve to bring some of the most dangerous individuals in the Polity into the war. Mr Crane, the indefatigable brass killing machine sets out for vengeance, while Orlandine, a vastly-augmented haiman who herself controls Jain technology, seeks a weapon of appalling power and finds allies from an ancient war.

Meanwhile Mika, scientist and Dragon expert, is again kidnapped by that unfathomable alien entity and dragged into the heart of things: to wake the makers of Jain technology from their five-million-year slumber.

But Erebus’s attacks are not so indiscriminate, after all, and could very well herald the end of the Polity itself . . .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6992 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

SFX Magazine
'Asher is brilliant at conveying the vastness of space, the strangeness of alien life and the sweep of planetary horizons.'

About the Author

Neal Asher was born in Billericay, Essex, and still lives nearby. His previous full-length novels are Gridlinked, The Skinner, The Line of Polity, Cowl, Brass Man, The Voyage of the Sable Keech, Polity Agent, Hilldiggers and Prador Moon.

Customer Reviews

Bang on!
I love space opera and this series, the Agent Cormac novels, has delivered in spades. Line war is billed as it's conclusion, my thoughts on that later, and contains the usual rip roaring multi threaded action we have come to expect as Cormac uncovers a very nasty conspiracy which takes him from fighting on the frontiers to the very heart of the Polity.

On the way we have gigantic space weapons, vast battle sequences, mahyem on a planetary scale, conversations with the makers of ancient booby traps and many other gripping sequences.

A great end to the series, neatly typing up nearly all the threads laid out during the previous four books but I can't see Neal Asher leaving a character as good as Cormac on the shelf for long, I wager he'll be back elsewhere in the polity metaverse, even if just as a Deus ex machina plot device.

A good pager turner but lacks the oomph factor of his other books.
If you are reading a review for this book, chances are you're a Neal Asher fan already. This is the 5th and supposedly final installment of the Ian Cormac series, so no persuasion to read it is needed. If not yet a fan, then a description of his writing for me is akin to a magic eye picture, in that his books are always interesting to start but not always very clear what they're all about. Then, suddenly concepts and stories, the brain did not think previously comprehensible, are thrust in to view. This is true of Line War but when it all becomes clear this book just slightly lacks that oomph factor of the other books. It pains me to give only 3 stars to an author of stratospheric dimensions, but, despite being a good page turner, for me Asher has not added anything extra to what has gone before. The Cormac books are all a bit bleaker and less humourous than the others, but even knowing this I did not root for the characters quite as much as I wanted. Gimme Sniper the War Drone over Knobbler any day. Brass Man was the zenith of the series in my opinion. For the uninitiated, read The Skinner and Voyage of the Sable Keech. They're the best sci-fi books I've ever read.

top stuff
Another cracker from Neal. Lots of converging threads in this book, lots of nasty technology and quite a few grumpy war drones.

Not a good book to start with if you are just getting into Asher's Polity series. Line War very much builds on the previous novels and you could get a bit lost without having read them first.