HILLDIGGERS

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What we have is a wonderfully rich and complex tale that happily flips between giving the mind something to weighty mull over and pleasing its baser, thrill-seeking desires -- Jonnie Bryant (Deathray)

If there's a more enjoyable and provocative sci-fi action saga this year, we'll be seriously surprised. -- Saxon Bullock (SFX)

A very political novel about the conflicts between the military and civilians, between the war and post-war generations, and balancing truth and reconciliation. -- Anthony Brown (Starburst)

A terrible war once raged between the two rival planets within a distant solar system. Over the centuries their human inhabitants had ‘adapted’ themselves to the extremely different conditions of their new homes, far outside Polity influence..

In the midst of this merciless conflict, one side encountered a bizarre object suspected of being a cosmic superstring employed as a new weapon by the rival side. Their attack on it caused the object to collapse into four parts, each found to be packed either with alien technology or some unknown form of life. Pending further study, these were quickly encased inside four separate Ozark cylinders, and stored in a massively secure space station in orbit.

Sometime later, while conducting research on this alien entity they now call ‘the Worm’, a female scientist falls pregnant and susequently gives birth to quads. She then inexplicably commits suicide by walking directly out into space…

The war was finally brought to an end by use of new weapons arising as a result of research of the Worm. These were employed by giant space dreadnoughts nicknamed ‘hilldiggers’ –– and their destructive power created new mountain ranges out of the vanquished planet’s terrain. Twenty years after the dust has settled, those four exceptionally talented orphans have grown up to assume varying degrees of power and influence within a post-war society.

And one of this exceptional breed now seems determined to gain total control over the deadly hilldiggers. But why?

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Available from Amazon in paperback and kindle. Also from the Book Depository (free international shipping).

- a new Polity novel can be as enjoyable as ever and now I want more of this series too!! – Fantasy Book Critic

The Technician is no doubt one of the best new novels I have read this year. It got a fantastic inner journey with fast-paced alien-world action. – Cybermage

I know that when a tale from him arrives that I’m going to get a story that I absolutely love. – Falcata Times

The Technician was awesome. – Walker of Worlds

Jeremiah Tombs, erstwhile religious policeman and only living survivor of a hooder attack, has escaped his sanatorium. The scorpion drone Amistad lets him run, calculating that a series of confrontations with reality will finally heal his mind and permit access to the valuable information it migh contain, for it was the near mythical Technician that attacked him all those years ago, and it did something to his mind that even the AIs don’t understand.

The Theocracy has been dead for twenty years, and the Polity rules on Masada. But the Tidy Squad consists of rebels who cannot accept the new order. Their hate for surviving theocrats is undiminished, and the iconic Jeremiah Tombs is at the top of their hitlist

The amphidapt Chanter pursues the Technician in his mudmarine, trying to understand the grotesque sculptures of bones the creature makes with its victim’s remains, trying to understand its art. To solve the puzzle that is Tombs, he is recruited by Amistad, along with ex-rebel Commander Lief Grant, and the lethal black AI Penny Royal, whom everyone thought was dead.

PRADOR MOON

Available from Amazon in paperback or kindle. Also from the Book Depository (free international shipping).

Neal Asher takes on first contact, Polity style. This original novel recounts the first contact between the aggressive Prador aliens, and the Polity Collective as it is forced to retool its society to a war footing. The overwhelming brute force of the Prador dreadnaughts causes several worlds and space stations to be overrun. Prador Moon follows the initial Polity defeats, to the first draws, and culminates in what might be the first Polity victory, told from the point of view of two unlikely heroes.

The back cover of Asher's latest has the heading, "It's first contact . . . Polity style!" If you guessed that involved tea and crumpets, you're slightly off the mark. The opening chapter describes the first meeting between Prador emissaries and a human Polity ambassador, the latter being promptly lifted by one claw belonging to the former, and then snipped in two. The first diplomatic meeting between the two races thus marks a bloody and explosive beginning to total war. -- J J S Boyce (Green Man Review)

This being a Neal Asher novel, however, these issues do not tend to incite esoteric, multi-page conversations exploring the finer points of morality. As in the previous five Polity books and his extra-continuum novel Cowl, Asher is content to raise the issues for the reader to think about while his enraged combatants proceed to rip each other's intestines out. -- Scifi.com

I wasn't sure I was going to really enjoy this book when if first fell into my hands, but by the end of the first chapter, I had become convinced that this was a new universe I was going to want to explore. -- Paul Haggerty (sfrevu)

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