The Line of Polity

I greatly enjoyed the first of Neal Asher's “Ian Cormac” books, and this, the second, is, if anything, an improvement. Cormac himself doesn't feature quite so much in this one, although he's still a major presence. But we also have a wider cast of supporting characters getting their moment in the spotlight in a plot concerning a religious dictatorship and a madman with access to planet-destroying technology. It's more explicitly military than the first novel, and manages to explore some different aspects of the universe in which it is set, with more focus here on the situation outside the Polity. There's also a sub-plot that follows on directly from the action of the first novel, but which still leaves that open for further development.

There's a good cast of varied characters, and an imaginative description of an alien and deadly planetary ecology. The action rarely lets up, and the story has more strands to it than the previous offering.