The Skinner - Spatterjay

Format:	Paperback 596 pages

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Synopsis

To the remote planet Spatterjay come three travellers with very different missions. Janer is directed there by the hornet Hive-mind; Erlin comes to find the sea captain who can teach her to live; and Keech - dead for seven hundred years - has unfinished business with a notorious criminal. Spatterjay is a watery world where the human population inhabits the safety of the Dome and only the quasi-immortal hoopers are safe outside amidst a fearful range of voracious life-forms. Somewhere out there is Spatterjay Hoop himself, and monitor Keech cannot rest until he can bring this legendary renegade to justice for atrocious crimes committed centuries ago during the Prador Wars. Keech does not realise that Hoop's body is running free on an island wilderness, while his living head is confined in a box on an Old Captain's ships. Nor does he know that the most brutal Prador of all is about to pay a visit, intent on wiping out all evidence of his wartime atrocities. Which means major hell is about to erupt in this chaotic waterscape.

Book details

Published
07/03/2003

Publisher
Tor

ISBN
9780330484343

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UK Kirkus review

Neal Asher won many readers over with Gridlinked, a truly intoxicating slice of cyber-punk science fiction in which the ideas fizz like fireworks, and this follow-up is equally exciting. Three travellers arrive on the planet Spatterjay. Janer is bringing the eyes of the Hornet Hive Mind, although it is not yet clear to him what his mission might be; Erlin is looking for the elderly sea captain who, she believes, can teach her how to live; and Sable Keech is locked into a vendetta which he has no intention of abandoning - even though he himself has been dead for 700 years. The remote world on which they land is almost entirely covered by ocean, with all but a very few human visitors enjoying safety inside the island's Dome. Only the natives risk the appalling dangers outside. In this remarkable environment, Asher brilliantly interweaves the destinies of his very disparate characters, and the result is a piece of phantasmagoric science fiction that few aficionados will want to miss. A particular achievement is the astutely judged balance between the imperatives of the plot and the necessity of creating a fully imagined world, with all its attendant strangeness. Sterling stuff. (Kirkus UK)