I’ve just joined up on The Library Thing, which seems pretty lively. Masses of reviews on there from the readers and lots of handy book suggestions. I rather like one comment I got there from a poster called ‘andyl’ (emphasis mine):

Yeah apart from Cowl Neal’s books fall into two broad camps

1) Fast-paced super-spy secret agent types.
2) Very visceral novels about the alien environment of Spatterjay which someone summed up as “Blood, guts, and hundred-ton-sentient-mollusc rape.” and which if I was Neal I would insist appear on the covers of all the Spatterjay novels.

However apart from those I really like the Mason’s Rats short stories which are completely divorced from the Spatterjay / Polity setting.