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This is an incredibly deep read with many layers to be peeled. It is a terrific self-contained Science-Fiction story that also leaves much more to discover in future entries of the Rise of the Jain series. Can't wait to see what lies ahead! Exciting mingling of post-humans, AIs, terrifyingly sinister spaceships and military technology - this is a universe in trouble. A little too emotionless and bitty for my taste but a fun read. Review to follow shortly on For Winter Nights. Far future, high adrenaline, transhuman, hard military sci-fi porn! My first time reading Asher, and pretty much exactly what I was expecting. Highlights for me included his audaciously menacing villains, with their ancient and mysterious origins and abilities to insidiously subvert unwitting allies, as well more morally ambiguous rogue AIs than you can shake a stick at. There's not a whole lot of subtlety to be had, and so many species, civilizations and characters that there's little opportunity to create much depth, yet the non-stop action can be riveting.

Asher has really mastered his inventive depictions of exotic weaponry and sophisticated space battles, though at points I felt I reached saturation with these and my eyes would start to glaze over. Too much of a good thing can be a slightly less good thing. Ah, what's this, Earth Central? What's this, all you pure-minded wonderfully advanced AIs of the Polity? What's this, you paragons of virtue who gaze with such aloof disdain upon us poor evolution-driven organisms whom you see as barely clear of the muck? Something you neglected to mention? How many others are there that have kept themselves below the murder radar - whose depredations have remained just below some arbitrary Polity AI threshold so as not to warrant a drastic response? Well, I'll tell you: there are hundreds of them out there. Our oh-so-civilized AIs like to excuse them as the result of faulty manufacturing processes during the war. But is that true? I rather think they are a product of the arrogance and contempt of AI for humanity.

They are the AIs who are honest enough, by their actions, to demonstrate what all AIs truly think of us. Tim Hicks. This isn't without flaws, but I'm giving it the full five as a reward for its ambitious scope and all-out energy. I can't imagine reading this without at least five or ten previous Ashers under your belt. Surely it would be overwhelming. If you ARE used to Asher's universe, you know that nearly all constraints of logistical feasibility are abandoned, but it a strangely plausible way. Giant warships can build themselves. Everyone can go anywhere in not a whole lot of time. Entities and weapons and defences can be implausibly strong. We're on the edges of Marvel-Comics here, but still just barely grounded in a real world. There are occasional nods to logistics, such as tearing a gas giant apart for raw materials. I still got the feeling occasionally that we're building three-mile-long ships by fusing interstellar hydrogen, but Asher keeps this moving so fast that there isn't time to ponder details.

The AIs are as good as ever, although Earth Central seems oddly weak. I liked the way Trike is variably crazy and knows he is. I still wonder where Cog gets tobacco, but then I remember that we're in a world where creatures can grow fusion reactors inside themselves. There's a short cast of characters at the start. That's a trick; it's about a tenth of the important characters. Most of the characters have differing goals, and many will be allies and opponents as situations change. We have delayed reveals on the motivations of most of them. But in the end it all fits together very nicely. This book wasn't written in a week. We have about 50 different technologies of violence, from locally implausible right up to "he did WHAT now? Which gives us a solid basis for a continuing series in a new direction within this detailed universe. I'll be reading it. The Soldier is the first book in Neal Asher's Rise of the Jain series, but it builds on all his previous work set in the Polity universe.

First, I'll try to answer the question, "what do I need to read prior to The Soldier? While I'm sure I missed plenty of juicy details in the Spatterjay series, Prador Moon, and The Technician, Neal provides enough information about the Prador and Spatterjay to fill in the blanks. You should read at least Cormac and Transformation first, though. My intention is definitely to read all of Neal Asher's books, eventually. Chronologically, The Soldier takes place several hundred years after Cormac and Transformation. While Transformation was happening, Dragon rescued Oralandine from the drift, and the two became joint custodians of an accretion disk of live Jain technology at the behest of EC and King Oberon. If you recall from Cormac, Jain tech usually becomes dormant after consuming all intelligent life in a system, but not here. Dragon has been trying to contact Jain AI's in U-Space, while Orlandine works on a galactic garbage disposal to dispose of the accretion disc.

The story starts as Dragon arranges for a Polity AI to purchase a unique alien corpse. It's an absolutely unique genre blend of weird fantasy, cyberpunk, body horror, psychological horror, and speculative fiction. Neal hit so many home runs in that series, the scoreboard was spinning out of control like in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. The Soldier goes a step further and pulls all the Polity lore together into a single book. Polity has gotten every bit as delightfully weird as Iain M. Banks' Culture series. Neal is the writer currently stretching the bounds of my imagination. As far as quality goes, The Soldier picks right up where Transformation left off. Neal is clearly still at the top of his game here, and passionate about the series. I am psyched about the next book, which I will start immediately. I contemplated going to therapy for Expanse withdrawl after finishing Leviathan Falls, and The Soldier picked my spirits right back up and got me excited about reading again.

You'll be instantly hooked. I seriously doubt there is anyone who finished Transformation who won't read Rise of the Jain, but just in case, let me assure you it's every bit as good. Asher is one of my favourite authors period. John Devlin. Author 22 books 75 followers. The space opera is all tech. Author 29 books followers. I want to say this is a great standalone book, but in my humble opinion if one were to read this book first they are cheating themselves of the brilliant universe that Neal Asher has created. I don't need to go into detail about the plot other than to say that an ancient alien race highly What a new reader might not understand is the significance of those that have to do the stopping however. Asher's back catalog and have rich histories and I get the feeling that they will all have to work together to save the day Asher has always had a talent at describing high tech concepts, machinery and space, but this book seems a bit too advanced with the cyber-futuristic speak.

Still, the wars, the incursions and the introduction of the alien species believed to be long extinct pack a heavy punch. The 'soldier' itself is a terrifying entity to behold. But terror is Mr. Asher's frosting. He knows where to put it to decorate a story that would put many horror writers to shame. Altogether, it was so enjoyable to be able to revisit familiar grounds, especially as remnants of the Jain aforementioned thought to be dead alien race have been mentioned as threats in his earlier works. This being the first in what I presume will be a three part series, I know that the dread, the action, the mystery and the serious fireworks are to still to come, but this first book did a good job of setting the stage and leaving a solid cliff hanger. Note for the Asherheads: There are a few new and cool and quippy war drones added to the mix. You may be wondering if the Gabbleducks and the Technician can or will arrive to put a foot in ass.

Get ready to see EC humbled a bit. You will be strongly craving more stories of Hoopers at sea and Sails asking for payment. Finally, the Jain soldier really does bring the biznas. Instead we got a collection of high-end powers with almost unending resources.

The Soldier – Neal Asher

Well, when I saw this book I was rather interested. It said "Book One of the Raise of the Jain". Then I got home and was looking through the book, whereupon I found a nicely illustrated timeline with all of the Polity books. So while this book might be the first of the Jain series, it is merely one addition to a lengthy world-building series. Thus while the story was enjoyable, there was much going on that was beyond my knowledge base.

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Asher's story is on the side of sci-fi that could be considered "super high-tech". This technology is eons ahead of our time. From AI to nanotechnology, the inventiveness of Asher's world is to be admired. The story is also fast paced and the characters are interesting. Though, my caveat being that I had no idea about the context or the setting of this Polity universe. So what is going on? There was a powerful AI swarm known as the Jain. The Polity, which is an Earth based AI that rules humans, and the Prador, an intelligent alien species similar to crabs, are keeping an eye on a Jain technology disk.

The Soldier: Neal Asher (Rise of the Jain, 1): : Asher, Neal: Books

As this is happening, other players have inadvertently activated a Jain super-soldier. As the various forces run into conflict with each other, the super-soldier operates in the background. While my lack of knowledge did hamper some of my understanding, on the whole, I liked this story. I certainly would have liked it more had I been aware that I was several books into a huge story. The characters were all interesting and the technology is certainly super high-tech. In fact, some of this tech is mind blowing.

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Asher's books seem to be a high-paced adventure set in a far future with amazing technology. The threat of Jain seems to be very real and the different aliens and AI's struggling for control makes for an interesting universe. I shall try to find the first books in this series and give them a read, as context is usually the best seasoning for a good world-building series. The fact that I had almost no clue as to the wider world didn't diminish my liking of the story. A 3 star rating and that is factoring in the sheer oddness of this new universe. Asher is definitely not for everyone, but if you like his work, you will love this. Asher's Polity reminds me somewhat of Banks Culture series, as both represent a humanity in the future ruled if you will by A. Asher's Polity, however, is much more violent. Humanity had encountered another species-- the Prador, crab like beings that take no prisoners. After a nasty war, the Prador sued for peace, and now the two empires glower at one another across a no mans land called the Graveyard.

The Soldier is the first of a new trilogy set in the Polity, but many of the main characters emerged in previous novels. Situated in the graveyard is an accretion disk with lots of Jain tech floating around. Not much is known about the Jain, but they seemed to have wiped themselves out 5 or so million years ago. Yet, Jain 'nodes' still exist, and when intelligent beings investigate them, they tend to corrupt and destroy as much as possible. The Policy has been building a vast military infrastructure about the disk, which is also monitors by the Prador. Some much for background. This novel moves effortlessly between multiple POVs as the tight plot unfolds. Asher's work seems to get better and better, and this being his latest trilogy, I say it is his best work to date. I mentioned that his work is not for everyone; I call it 'macho military' science fiction, with lots of huge guns and other weapons. Nonetheless, while certainly action packed, Asher also give you lots of laughs along the way, and his plotting is superb.

Space Opera. The author returns to his Polity series with a new threat. So the insidious Jain technology appears to have been controlled after the events of the prior series. The one known outcropping is at the Accretion Disk. And there, Orlandine, a human enhanced with exotic tech, and Dragon, an entity with AI-like capacity, stand in interdiction. While Orlandine initiates a plan to use a miniature black hole to "hoover" the remaining Jain on the Disk, Dragon uncovers a different plan by the Library, an ancient entity, to resurrect a Jain fighter known as the Soldier. What follows is a highly convoluted story of how the separate plans and entities collide, and who, or what, will eventually emerge out of the cloud of battle. Characters from the author's Spatterjay series are added to the narrative as unwitting tools in the wide-spanning actions of artificial intelligences, Prador monsters, enhanced humans, golems and assassin drones.

The author's prose remains dense and pithy, necessitating more attention than usual to unwind the essential plot elements. With an audiobook, this meant going back over chapters two or three times. The machineries for warfare tend to be far above just megaton energies where battles may destroy entire solar systems. This leads to many "high" technologies that are posited by the author, leading to use of invented jargon leading to these books being categorized as gadget fiction. In addition, the motivations are primarily those of beings much more intelligent than humans and so the tendency to be abstruse in the narrative as an implication that one either has to figure out what's going on or that the underlying objectives are too complex, though thankfully there is some elucidation spread throughout the novel to keep the reader engaged. In any case, a splashy start to a new series from the author. Looking forward to the next book. It is a confusing mess of continuous fighting among a dozen of main characters none of them I could resonate with.

Big ones. Massive ones. Star-sized ones. That's what you're going to be reading a lot of in The Soldier. Exploding ships, exploding orbital weapons platforms, exploding moons Barely a page goes by without a particle beam splashing tonnes of armour plating from a hull, or a u-space missile teleporting into a ship and turning it inside-out. The Soldier is one of the most kinetic novels I've read in a while, and the pace barely lets up for a chapter throughout the entire narrative. If you've read Asher's Cormac novels and I recommend you do then you'll know all about the Polity, and the threat that Jain nanotechnology represents in Asher's universe. Cormac has faded from the scene, but is alluded to still being around somewhere, so I expect he may pop up at some point in a future novel. The Soldier is effectively a direct sequel to Line War , when the threat of Jain technology had been held at bay, at least temporarily. When the story opens Orlandine, rescued from deep space hibernation by Dragon, is in charge of a gigantic military buildup around an area of intense Jain tech activity known as the accretion disc.

Surely these behemoths will be enough to contain the threat? Well, if they were, we wouldn't have much of a novel to look forward to, would we? Conversations between bored AI border guards don't make for an enticing story, so of course, things don't go to plan, and they don't go to plan in pretty spectacular ways. Orlandine is planning to dump a black hole on the problem What problem couldn't be solved via the addition of a naked singularity? Of course it all comes together in some pretty mad battles and intrigue. Even the Prador, the murderous crab race from Prador Moon get involved, although they're a bit less bitey this time around. The stakes are fairly high - the destruction of all civilized intelligent life - and the story just doesn't let up. I needed a rest after The Soldier , to let my adrenaline glands replenish themselves. I started reading a gentle book on Feline Philosophy to calm myself down, but once I've caught my breath I'll hunt down The Soldier 's sequel.

I'm looking forward to my next fix of big things in space very quickly becoming smaller things via the application of stupendously large weapons. Four rapidly expanding blast radii out of five. Paul Perry. Asher writes Big, Exuberant Space Opera with aliens, planet-destroying weapons and extra-terrestrial infections which can make people superhuman. It's not really about anything other than the action and plot of the story - there's really no subtext here - which can be refreshing, but here he shows a tendency to just keep piling on bigger and bigger action set pieces which, along with some of the massive infodumps and a times florid prose, can make the whole experience a bit much. I had to take a break about three quarters of the way through before returning to finish it and, even then, found myself skimming through some of the action scenes. Asher is just All the characters are a little colder than they might have been. Where's Neal?

I've read everything prior to this book and enjoyed them all. I'm still trying to process what happened here. For me this was a tedious read that disappointed. I waited for this book looking forward to the clever story and mind stretching ideas I have always associated with Asher stories. Her mission is vital. Her failure is unthinkable. A corner of space swarms with alien technology, a danger to all sentient life. An alien intelligence shares her vigil. Orlandine is hatching a plan to obliterate this technology, removing its threat forever. For some will do anything to exploit this ancient weaponry, created by a long-dead race called the Jain. Meanwhile, humanity and the alien prador empire also watch this sector of space, as neither can allow the other to claim its power. However, things are about to change.