STG's

Skipping my usual procedure (one book in the series, one out of the series) when I find a book series I like, I've just finished In the Line of Polity, by Neal Asher. I did consider reading something else, but couldn't resist. :-) It was even better than the first. The story revolves about Ian Cormac, the ECS super-agent, and an evil scientist which not only doesn't mind doing human testing, is now working for the separatists. And now he has an embedded AI and Jain tech  (looks a bit like classic magical nanotech - but it is sentient and it is a bit implied that it is the Jain *race*) - which makes him capable of a lot of damage... Most of the major players of the first book (Gridlinked) are here again - including another segment of Dragon. There are plenty of other threads in the story. Sometimes, notably with David Webber novels, I find myself bothered by some of them, and waiting for the better ones to return. That is not the case here - everything works well tog...

I had played and bought Titan Attacks - a wonderful Space Invaders style shooter, with great retro graphics and neat physics - quite a while ago. So I was on Puppy Games list and got the pre-release demo of Revenge of the Titans. It was an incredibly annoying RTS (some might say tower defense game). You had to click on your refineries to collect cash. You had to click on your guns to reload. I honestly thought I was doing a re-review here, till I noticed I didn't ever review that version. I just forgot about it till it was included in the new Humble Indie Bundle. I bought the bundle, and didn't even bother to download it. That is, until I got a message mentioning that the new version completely removed all the clicky mechanics I hated... Then I downloaded it (and a few extra releases - they had several in the last couple of months), just to check out how it played now. And turns out I really like it. It always had a fun retro style I liked, but with the changes in rel...

I've just finished Gridlinked by Neal Asher. I've recently reviewed a short story collection, and I liked it enough that as I soon as I knew his novels were on Kindle, I had to try one. I certainly wasn't disappointed. The title refers to the ECS super-agent Ian Cormac, who has been Gridlinked - had his mind connected to the AIs - for much longer that is considered safe, and is losing touch with his humanity. Given that people get cravings if they get away from a computer for too long (not me. of course, that might be because I'm rarely away from one for very long...), I'd say he takes it pretty well. Given the title, I thought this would be a much bigger aspect of the story. Still the rest is well worth it, and covers the investigation of a major, unprecedented terrorist attack. The pace was nice, and the ending was mostly satisfactory, albeit a little predictable and more telegraphed in advance than necessary (although I imagine I'd complain that it wa...

Do Unto Other - by Michael Z. Williamson - is another book of the Ripple Creek bodyguards, set in the Grainne universe. After reading Hamilton and Asher's super high tech universes, this one is a bit of a letdown for me, in that area. However, the usual action of Williamson's books makes this one a satisfactory read. The odds against the bodyguards is huge as usual, and there are plenty of explosions, fights and intrigue. Very enjoyable. On a personal note, it was funny to read about a miner revolt as I'm replaying Red Faction:Guerilla - which covers a miner's revolt and was horribly buggy and slow on my old computer, but runs great at full HD at the current. Final Note: this book is available at Webscriptions  as a pack. Given that there are other good books (and some I've already reviewed here), if you use a Kindle or any other e-book reader, this might be a good alternative.

The Gabble - by Neal Asher - is a short stories collection of his Polity universe. The Polity universe has a lot of cool tech - implants, AIs that rule the worlds, bots - inhabited by AI or human memories, portals, etc. It also has a lot of cool aliens and well thought out worlds, too. That's a big part of what made this book pretty good. One thing that made it much less cool to me is that many of the stories had been published on Analog or Asimov, so I've read them before. There are many memorable stories here, so it was worth the reread, too. The Kindle version has a few extras - some articles about his work, and an encyclopedia of the Polity, which was quite interesting and made me want to read the rest of the books. Just as I'm writing this entry, I went to Amazon and noticed that a lot of his book are available for Kindle! So I'll probably be posting many more entries about his books...