The Technician

Neal Asher

Neal Asher

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Technician+HB.jpg




Twenty years after the fall of the Theocracy, a religious policeman, Jeremiah Tombs, the only living survivor of a hooder attack, has escaped his sanatorium. The scorpion drone Amistad lets him run, for though Polity technology could cure him, the AIs are reluctant to meddle since it was the near mythical Technician that attacked him, and it did something to his mind that even they don’t understand.

The amphidapt Chanter pursues the Technician in his mudmarine, trying to understand the grotesque sculptures of bones the creature makes with its victim’s remains, trying to understand its art. He is recruited by Amistad, along with ex-rebel Commander Lief Grant, and a lethal black AI everyone thought was dead.


Tombs could possess information about the racial suicide of the Atheter, but his self-destructive madness needs to be cured by confrontation with the reality about him, a reality in which the religion-hating Tidy Squad wants him dead. And meanwhile, in deep space, the mechanism the Atheter used to reduce themselves to animals, stirs from slumber and begins to power-up its weapons.
 
Neal,

Just saw a hardback copy of 'The Technician' in Waterstone's at Trafalgar Square, after a meeting n London today. The cover art looks brilliant - and thanks too (on behalf of everyone here) for the very nice acknowledgement of your online fans here and on Facebook etc.

There's another book I'll have to buy as soon as I've got some spare cash...
 
And it's available on Kindle, once I have finished The Desert Spear I will get this as a "spoil me" prezzie because I had to work on my birthday at 4:30am on a sunday morning.
 
I just picked this up on my recent haul. I wanted to read the stand alone novels before i move to the Agent Cormac series. Great cover by the way.
 
The Technician was great and as usual I felt a bit depressed that I'd finished it and there won't be another Neil Asher novel around for a while.

This was as much a book about religious faith as science fiction and as I bought the Kindle version I could see which passages had been highlighted by other readers. It was invariably the pithy dismissals of religion. This seems like a more thoughtful novel with less focus on blood and gore, not that I didn't love Spatterjay, and greater focus on the aftermath of political regime change.

The Atheter are fascinating and it was great to be on Masada again with the Gabbleducks, Heroynes and Hooders. I don't want to spoil it for others, but it's a great ending which hopefully will lead to a new storyline in the Polity universe.
 
I did find the first couple of chapters a bit hard as they kept flicking back 20 years. But i have to say that once that had settled down, i loved this book. I will look for it in Hardback as i think i'll want to read it again.Superb and thoroughly recommended.
 
I got an e-mail this morning from Amazon (one of several I seem to get every day!!!) and I noticed that Technician is on Kindle sale for 99p this Easter weekend.
I might get it, although I feel I should start with Polity novel 1, but Neal does say it is stand alone.

I was wondering, Neal, about the 99p Kindle price, is this something Amazon have discussed with you? Are you still going to receive your normal amount of the full cost of the Kindle edition or only a % of the 99p they are going to sell this novel at?

Amazon often do 99p sales of Kindle books and I just wondered how much of a say the Author has in it? Or does it go through your Publisher (was it Macmillan?)
 
Ooh, thanks for the heads up Moonbat. I've bought the Kindle version at that price, but I shall almost definitely buy the paperback as well, as all the others I have so far are the paperback versions, and I love the covers and am wanting to have the whole collection on my shelf :cool:
 
Indeed well spotted - I have been and gone and bought it! This is the only one of the Polity books that I hadn't bought yet!
 
Well I've read The Technician, it was the first of Neal's books I have read, having only read a couple of Mason's Rats stories, and I glad to say that I really liked it.

I haven't read any other polity stuff, but I don't think I had to, I enjoyed the book and I'll probably search out a few other Asher novels to read. I like the high tech stuff, I have to say that I read the kindle edition, so didn't have a front cover, but at the end of the book I saw what the cover should be, and I can only assume the creature on the front is supposed to be the Technician, it could be another hooder (the kindle is black and white) but it's probably the titular creature, it was nothing like I had imagined it, so I'm glad I didn't see it first because now I have my own image of the Technician in my head.

I was very impressed by this book, I'm not sure what to compare it to, but I liked it a lot.
 
Yeah, this is my favourite Neal Asher book so far.
 
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