Book 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 . . .
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.
