Prador Moon

A Novel of the Polity, Book 1

By: Neal Asher

Narrated by: David Marantz

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.

©2006 Neal Asher (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

good book poor narration.

the narrator constantly pronounces words incorrectly, its irritating and distracting but possible to get past.

must love Prador

Starts out with a warm welcome for our crabby friends and devolves quite nicely from there.

Excellent Story for the most part well read

Very enjoyable, kept me engaged.

Only thing that bothered me was the way David Marantz pronounced Occam Razor.

First Contact with humanities Nightmare.

I had heard really good things about Neal Asher and when I saw the “The Soldier (Rise of the Jain #1)” come up on sale in Audible I purchased it. Having no insight into the Polity Universe, I found myself struggling to understand without the back story. It was interesting but I was just not following all the factions and technology. After 3 hours I put the book aside and decided to go to the start and listen to Prador Moon (Polity Universe #1). I am glad I did because this now gives me so much more context to understand the universe.

Prador Moon is fast-paced and interesting, with lots of action, bringing to life the nightmare of first contact with a hostile, cruelly alien species. It was a short read packed with lots of action and cool tech, but I would have enjoyed a bit more insight into the main characters. I am definitely going to read more of the Polity Universe. I listened to the audio version and Audible had this book as part of their Plus Catalog, so I got to read it for free – always a nice thing. The narration by David Marantz was excellent. Worth the read and definitely the place to start if you are going to pick up a Neal Asher book.

great short story

loved to get some back story on the whole universe now I just find the beginning of it all ik hooked

Solid sci-fi

Nothing fancy here. Just a fun, solid sci-fi story, much like a Peter Hamilton book without the cringe. Mispronunciations in the narration didn’t bother me, and while it’s not the best, it’s also not the worst. I’ll definitely be picking up more books in this series anytime I want something engaging & easy to dive into.

Polity / Prador in a 'pp' contest

Neal Asher's Prador Moon describes the initial contact and subsequent 'war' when the Polity, the Earth originated societal / governmental entity that is mostly AI with a liberal sprinkling of humans meets an intelligent alien race, the Prador. With first contact, the Prador pull no punches and initiate the war to obtain Polity technology. Two augmented humans play a central role in the Polity's rapid pivot to a war posture, all while battling an internal separatist movement that believes the Prador offer them the opportunity to shuck off their AI overlords.

While Asher's main focus is on human augmentation, he spend less time with the AI entities themselves. The alien race, the Prador, is a bit disappointing as they are basically anthropomorphized crabs with a social order designed around cage matches and the boss from hell. Along with their total lack of any morality concept and sadistic streak, it's hard to envision how they've managed to ever reach the stars.

The narration is reasonable with moderate character distinction. Pacing is fine for this relatively short offering.

Strange ending

Is as standalone book I did not understand the ending at all. sorry I just like clear cut endings

was pretty good.

It was hard for me to get into the crab monsters. The story has a good face and it is an interesting read. Just not super my cup of tea.

Best served BEFORE subsequent Polity stories

Having read this novel after previously reading the three Spatterjay series books by Asher, it's unfortunate that this decent story is by comparison, made to feel underdeveloped and linear. It has plenty of ferocious action and exotic alien species which are the hallmarks or his writing, but too few parallel converging narratives and plot twists that I have come to expect after those more refined works. While the story's climax had a clever surprise that I found rewarding, it felt like a few more would have been welcome along the way.