Hilldiggers - Book Review


Just finished Hilldiggers - by Neal Asher. As usual, this is a Polity novel, however it doesn't happen in the Polity.

The setting is between two world, colonized from Earth before the AIs took over in The Quiet War. Asher wouldn't want to skip on the bizarre creatures aspect, I imagine, so one of the world is badly toxic and the Brummalians are weird adapted humans, with a hive mind.

They have been at war with the Sudorians for decades, until the Hilldiggers came about - massive ships with grav-tech weapons. Now the war is over, but after they captured an alien life form, most of the planet has gone insane...

When the present time of the story starts, a Consul from the Polity (an old Captain from Spatterjay arrives on the system. And there is also a quirky AI drone, as usual. They will have to stop a civil war and genocide...

Hilldiggers was very good. I'd even say it was surprisingly good for a non-series book - I usually like Asher's series more than the stand-alones - this one was a real page-turner.

While the end and the conclusions should be somewhat obvious much earlier, the revelations and the end were satisfying, and specially the minor revelation about the whole thing in the epilogue.

Strongly recommended for fans of the Polity series.

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