“Beautifully paced … does just as well as at slam-bang action scenes as at painting frightening pictures … This is space opera at a high peak of craftsmanship.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“What Asher delivers here is state-of-the-art SF on so many levels … a compelling, smart read.”

—Paul Di Filippo, Locus

“An exciting, intricate, and unabashedly futuristic story rife with twists and turns … Asher returns to his popular far-future series, Polity Universe, with another fast-paced space opera filled with his trademark technological marvels and elaborate world building.”

—Booklist

“Hardboiled, fast-paced space opera epic … Asher’s books are similar to the world of Iain M. Banks’ Culture universe, but the Polity is arguably a much darker and more vicious environment—and all the better for it.”

—The Register

“Perpetually on the knife’s edge, and this constant tension works wonders for creating a page-turning atmosphere. It’s a damningly gripping and infecting book.”

—Upcoming4.me

“A superb novel and Asher has an amazing talent for world-building, for writing larger-than-life characters, for weaving gripping plots and for imagining exotic alien races and wonderful technologies. Huge ships! Big weapons! Space battles! Ground battles! Treason! Revenge! This is New Space Opera at its best.”

—Sense of Wonder

“One of his best works so far … Asher is a modern master of sci-fi.”

—Starburst magazine

“[The Polity books] are SF novels that mix early cyberpunk’s insouciance with the widescreen baroque spectacle of space opera and the pacing of an airport action-thriller. But even by Neal Asher’s standards, there’s something particularly grisly about Dark Intelligence.”

—SFX