Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4827 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 672 pages

John Courtenay Grimwood in Guardian (Review), May 2003
This is undoubtedly Asher's best novel: a complex, multilayered story...

Synopsis
Outlink station Miranda has been destroyed by a nanomycelium, and the very nature of this sabotage suggests that the alien bioconstruct Dragon - a creature as untrustworthy as it is gigantic - is somehow involved. Sent out on a titanic Polity dreadnought, the Occam Razor, agent Cormac must investigate the disaster. Meanwhile, on the remote planet Masada, the long-term rebellion can never rise above-ground, as the slave population is subjugated by orbital laser arrays controlled by the Theocracy in their cylinder worlds, and by the fact that they cannot safely leave their labour compounds. For the wilderness of Masada lacks breathable air ...and out there roam monstrous predators called hooders and siluroynes, not to mention the weird and terrible gabbleducks.

Customer Reviews

Cracking Read
New ideas and characters with some of the good old ones from Gridlinked.
Gabbleducks are not quite as comical as the name suggests and again a very good read. Big fan of the stretches the human mind can make with sci fi in space and ASHER does this very well. Still not quite Peter HAMILTON but very close. On to the BRASS MAN

The Line of Polity
Ian Cormac, the Polity Agent of the prequel "Gridlinked", didn't really strike me as a character you'd revisit for a sequel. He was deliberately written flat to emphasise his dehumanisation, but was ultimately as cool as most fictional secret agents and makes a fine comeback in the second of Asher's Cormac series.

"The Line of Polity" fails to "Grinlinked" only on account of it not featuring the attention-grabbing Mr Crane, but it otherwise excels; the main action takes place on a planet with its own bizarre ecosystem that Asher brilliantly brings to life. Most planets in sci-fi do not have character in themselves, but the planet Masada is like a living, breathing personality here, with its own food chain and terrifying species. It's wonderful to find such effort put into making the place as interesting as the people that inhabit it.

The story is great and fast-paced, the returning characters become more rounded and the new ones are sufficiently realised to keep you reading. As with the first book this isn't Iain M Banks, but it really is great fiction and well worth reading, doubly so if you liked other novels by Asher.

Gridlinked it is not.
Gridlinked was a stunning book. The pace and the storyline were top class science fiction. Line of Polity has Ian Cormac back again but this time it is boring.

It is hard to say why, the alien world is good and the plot isn't awful. Basically I think there is too much Dragon (the weakest point of Gridlinked) and the "bad guy" is basically unbelievable. Where Gridlinked had pace and character this book has too many characters and too many subplots. Also, by bringing back the characters from Gridlinked, the book has a soap opera feel to it. The ending is good but I found it a real struggle to get there.