Dark Intelligence

Transformation, Book 1

By: Neal Asher

Narrated by: Peter Noble

One man will transcend death to seek vengeance. One woman will transform herself to gain power. And no one will emerge unscathed....

Thorvald Spear wakes in hospital, where he finds he's been brought back from the dead. What's more, he died in a human vs. alien war which ended a whole century ago. But when he relives his traumatic final moments, he finds the spark to keep on living. That spark is vengeance. Trapped and desperate on a world surrounded by alien Prador forces, Spear had seen a rescue ship arriving. But instead of providing backup, Penny Royal, the AI within the destroyer, turned rogue. It annihilated friendly forces in a frenzy of destruction, and years later it's still free. Spear vows to track it across worlds and do whatever it takes to bring it down.

Isobel Satomi ran a successful crime syndicate. But after competitors attacked, she needed more power. Yet she got more than she bargained for when she negotiated with Penny Royal. She paid it to turn her part AI herself, but the upgrades hid a horrifying secret. The Dark AI had triggered a transformation in Isobel that would turn her into a monster, rapidly evolving into something far from human.

Spear hires Isobel to take him to the Penny Royal AI's last known whereabouts. But he cheats her in the process, and he becomes a target for her vengeance. And as she evolves further into a monstrous predator, rage soon wins over reason. Will Spear finish his hunt before he becomes the hunted?

This is the first volume in a no-holds-barred adventure set in Asher's popular Polity universe.

©2017 Neal Asher (P)2017 Macmillan Digital Audio

Excellent start to a promising series

Another great novel by Asher. A little less action than in his other novels and you don't really see how the multiple plotlines relate until the end of the novel, but one particular corner of Asher's universe is expanded as a result, which I'm sure will factor majorly in the Polity universe as a whole.

Make sure you've read the other novels in the Polity before you read this one, or you'll be lost as to the significance of what brief background information is present in this novel, and the full implication of the events in this book on future series. For my money, this entire universe is the closest to Iain Bank's Culture novels that I've come across, so if you're missing that universe you won't regret the time invested here.