Gridlinked
|
Book Summary Author: Neal Asher Edition: Hardcover Format: Bargain Price Published: 2003-08-16 ISBN: N/A Number of pages: 336 |
| New | New Usually ships in 1-2 business days | $9.61 | ||
| Used | Used Usually ships in 1-2 business days | $3.25 |
Your purchase is protected by the A-to-z Safe Buying Guarantee. Amazon.com automatically transfers your payment to the merchant so you'll never need to pay a merchant directly. Amazon.com A-to-z Safe Buying Guarantee covers both the delivery of your item and its condition upon receipt.
Book Reviews of the Gridlinked
Customer Review: I Finally Got Around to Reading Asher's First Book
Summary: 5 Stars
Neal Asher's book "Gridlinked" certainly would not fit well into much of my reading. It is certainly violent and has a number of characters with which one finds it hard to sympathizes. I generally don't care much for spy thriller types of science fiction (i.e. with James Bond licence to kill characters), but Asher has written one of the few I find interesting. It is his particular dark style that I like- one that I think tacks very unlikely events into a riveting fantasy-sci fi classic.
Ian Cormack is almost unidimentional- but then he is supposed to be! He has been linked to a computer grid for 30 years and now has to leave it to accomplish his current task. He is required to investigate an apparent failure of an interstellar runcible (instantaneous space travel system) that resulted in the nearly complete destruction of the planet Samarkand. He is being stalked while he attends to this task. The stalker, his major bete noir Arian Pelter, is a monomaniacal psychopath and thus does not think beyond getting revenge for the killing of his sister Angelina, despite the fact that she was killed in self defense. He is essentially a space mobster posing as a separatist. As a weapon he has a nearly indestructible Golem (android)named Crane that can cut almost anything or anyone to ribbons. The complications caused by various unexpected aliens, including a huge dragon, associated Golems and humans with their own agendas add further interest to this hard core sci fi adventure.
It is my fervent hope that society never reaches the amoral state described by Asher in this book, but then I will be dead before that time and thus will not see it if it does. I doubt that the technology will ever exist, but then that is the fun of sci fi - you don't have to ever live it! In the reverse of the fun of dinosaurs which are huge, ferocious and conveniently extinct, the sci future is not yet here and may never happen- we hope! It is that slim possibility that it could that adds to the experience.