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Gridlinked (Agent Cormac #1)

by Neal Asher (Goodreads Author)

3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 · rating details · 2,898 ratings · 170 reviews

Gridlinked is a science fiction adventure in the classic, fast-paced, action-packed tradition of Harry Harrison and Poul Anderson, with a dash of cyberpunk and a splash of Ian Fleming added to spice the mix.

Cormac is a legendary Earth Central Security agent, the James Bond of a wealthy future where "runcibles" (matter transmitters controlled by AIs) allow interstellar tra...more

Paperback, 423 pages

Published September 1st 2004 by Tor Science Fiction (first published May 2001)

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Mar 08, 2012 Pat rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: 14 year old boys

Shelves: science-fiction

I was recently introduced to Neal Asher with the Spatterjay series and I thank my lucky stars my introduction started with these novels rather than the appalling novel Gridlinked. I would never have read another Asher book again! And what a pity that would have been as the Spatterjay books were a rip roaring good read with great characters, set on an amazing world. I was then eager to get a better understanding of the Polity Universe and picked up Asher's first novel Gridlinked. Well i got halfw...more

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Jun 13, 2012 Gavin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime-mystery-thriller, sci-fi

Perfectly serviceable mystery-space-op-sci-fantasy. Not up there with Banks or Bear or Watts at their best but if you're after a book where an FTL culture still allegedly lives in a pre-scarcity economy and follows an action-lit plot-line you could do far worse.

Two criticisms I've had to pick out, if only because of the extreme strange-ness, though:

SPOILERS
1. Asher didn't seem to realise that our favourite characters were The Baddest Baddies: Pelter and Mr Crane (in fact, the series titular char...more Perfectly serviceable mystery-space-op-sci-fantasy. Not up there with Banks or Bear or Watts at their best but if you're after a book where an FTL culture still allegedly lives in a pre-scarcity economy and follows an action-lit plot-line you could do far worse.

Two criticisms I've had to pick out, if only because of the extreme strange-ness, though:

SPOILERS
1. Asher didn't seem to realise that our favourite characters were The Baddest Baddies: Pelter and Mr Crane (in fact, the series titular character and the other Gung Ho Hooray for the Polity good guys were likely the most dull until the very end). We spent the entire book wanting to see Mr Crane hit one of the Cyborg 30's like a train and then enjoy several pages of armoured super-titans duking it out at mega-speed. We got slightly less than a paragraph, ending with Crane getting bundled and perma-killed. Cormac then drilled a hole in Pelter's forehead without a second thought and was perplexed about how nuts he looked.

In a way this was quite a funny subversion of expectations when it comes to a Climactic Final Scrap, but this isn't a book I was reading for clever subversion. Especially in light of:

2. Was the Polity society supposed to be a dystopia? There isn't a great deal of Civ-Building done on screen, but whenever the Polity is mentioned it's reverentially. Some kind of capitalist, inter-stellar Super-Rome, perpetually thrusting it's glorious hegemony into the dark crevices of the galaxy. Then, in the flavour text you find out that when they create a sentient AI it's automatically a slave until it pays off what it cost to build it (generally in very dangerous military service). Huh. And later it turns out the punishment for criminals is to wipe their brain clean (kill them) and slap a new personality into the body. Oh... kay? I mean, I'm already finding it hard to cheer for the champions of Right here, guys.
SPOILERS END

Other than that, as I said, it is exactly what it said it was going to be on the tin. If you like your space opera served with a heaping side-dish of descriptive prose and pulse-rifles you'll be right at home.(less)

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Sep 09, 2008 L rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

This was essentially a great read, with the rushing about space; good guys & bad guys (with some complexity); a bit of romance; the need to save, if not humanity, at least a good portion of it; high tech, and more. Asher has quite the imagination, and I think his handling of linking & augmentation is better than most. In terms of character, he's got some of the usual "usual suspects" (for scifi) and some exceptionally wonderful characters.

So why only 3 stars? At times Asher gets too cau...more

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Aug 18, 2008 Tripp rated it 4 of 5 stars

f you are looking for creative, colorful, violent, and frightening science fiction novels, then pick up a Neal Asher. In the past few years I read Cowl and the Skinner, and I just read his first, Gridlinked. His books are set in the shared Polity universe, generally set a few hundred years from today where human society is ruled by AIs, connected via instantaneous travel and beset by enemies like the crablike Prador and the human Separatists. Holding back these terrors is Earth Central Security...more f you are looking for creative, colorful, violent, and frightening science fiction novels, then pick up a Neal Asher. In the past few years I read Cowl and the Skinner, and I just read his first, Gridlinked. His books are set in the shared Polity universe, generally set a few hundred years from today where human society is ruled by AIs, connected via instantaneous travel and beset by enemies like the crablike Prador and the human Separatists. Holding back these terrors is Earth Central Security and, in Gridlinked, the James Bond-esque Ian Cormac.

Cormac begins the book by nearly blowing a mission to uncover Separatist activity. His AI minders decide to delink him from the AI grid, telling him that his connection to the AIs has reduced his humanity and, by extension, his usefulness. He is then sent to investigate a act of terror on another planet.

Asher's creativity is immense. Even is his asides he spins up bizarre biologies and technologies. Weapons fetishists will love his many ideas and the rest will appreciate that many of his ideas are tied back into the story.

Some readers will note similarities to Ian Banks and Richard Morgan (whose novels were published after Gridlinked.) The Polity is somewhat similar to the Culture and the AI led ECS is certainly similar to Special Circumstances. The Polity's world is generally grimmer than that of the Culture and the ECS agents tend to be more happy in their roles compared to those of the often self-doubting Special Circumstance agents.

Asher and Morgan make for an interesting comparison as Asher leans right and Morgan leans left. For the most part this does not impact their narratives although it does impact their emphases. Both authors, for example, deal with the possibility of bodies having new psyches implanted within them. For Morgan this is a story of the powerful crushing the weak. For Asher, it is a case of justice, those who are removed are hardened criminals that society doesn't want to pay to house.

Don't take the political orientation as a guide to whether you should read either author, you should read both if you read science fiction at all.(less)

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Aug 22, 2007 Ren the Unclean rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Fans of Asher

Shelves: sci-fi

Gridlinked is really interesting, though not quite as good as Brass Man or Cowl. It does serve as a really good introduction to Asher's main character for this universe, Cormac.

Cormac is believably badass in this book, unlike so many other heroes of this archetype (the covert government agent) who are ridiculously unbeatable. Asher keeps this characterization in the other works I have read with Cormac in them. He does his job well and manages to solve the problems he is presented with, while giv...more

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Dec 22, 2008 Angela rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sf

I got this book as a freebie hardback at a Norwescon a few years ago, and have finally gotten around to reading it in a burst of wanting to get all the larger books on my To Read shelf off the queue. Having finished it up last night, I'm now not entirely sure whether I chose wisely. Asher writes well, I'll give him that; the story's certainly action-packed, and the pacing is excellent. I was compelled to read the whole thing all the way through last night rather than waiting for this morning's b...more I got this book as a freebie hardback at a Norwescon a few years ago, and have finally gotten around to reading it in a burst of wanting to get all the larger books on my To Read shelf off the queue. Having finished it up last night, I'm now not entirely sure whether I chose wisely. Asher writes well, I'll give him that; the story's certainly action-packed, and the pacing is excellent. I was compelled to read the whole thing all the way through last night rather than waiting for this morning's bus commute to finish it off, and this wasn't even entirely motivated by just not wanting to carry a hardback around two days in a row.

Ultimately, though, I came out of the book a little disappointed. One issue I've got with it is that it tries too hard to set up the protagonist, Ian Cormac, up as James-Bond-esque. There are excerpts from in-character works quoted at the beginning of every chapter, and a couple of these talk about Cormac on the assumption that this legendary figure must surely be fictional--and draw a parallel between him and Bond, too. While there are definitely a lot of similarities between Cormac and Bond, I'd already seen the connection made in review blurbs. Having the book do it too made me pretty much gave me a reaction of "I GET IT ALREADY!"

Next, as things are getting underway, a big deal is made to Cormac about how he needs to be booted off his connection to "the grid" on the grounds that it's begun to dehumanize him and deaden his ability to think on his own. My first issue with this is mostly just wry amusement: "why, we're not trying to make a statement here about THE INTERNET or anything, are we?" My second issue with it, though, is larger: I didn't quite feel like there was a payoff on this plot device. Cormac has very little trouble dealing with not being on the grid. His only difficulties, really, are occasionally twitching when he can't look something up immediately rather than just having to ask somebody about it, and one or two instances where another character loftily points out to him that he has forgotten how to ask questions on his own.

And it doesn't work for me. I kept looking for something to happen to really drive home for Cormac that "this is what I've been missing"--not only improvements in his ability to think for himself, but something that really drove home for him what it means to be human. He reaches no such epiphany. And while I saw the potential for seeing a cool parallel drawn between him and the primary bad guy--who was in fact gridlinked in a way, and growing progressively more inhuman through the story--there wasn't a payoff there, either. So for me as a reader, I didn't quite see the point of making that a significant enough plot point that it was worthy of being in the title.

All this said, I did enjoy reading the book. There's a lot of action, and although the ending is a little shaky (there's a twist I didn't expect and I'm not entirely sure whether I missed some sort of discovery on Cormac's part that explained what was up with that), there are intriguing questions about what exactly happened with the alien characters and how that'll be built on as the series progresses. I'll have to think about whether to read the next one. For this one, two and a half stars.(less)

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Nov 15, 2012 David Agranoff rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: cyberpunk, crime, military-sci-fi, space-opera

I generally like old school science fiction, I love me some early John Shirley, Phil K. Dick, Ursala Leguin, Norman Spinrad or John Brunner. When choosing Sci-fi novels I generally dip into the past, but Neal Asher is quickly becoming one of my favorite 21st century Science Fiction authors. My two favorite 21st century Sci-fi authors are Neal Asher and John Scalzi the author of the Old Man’s War series. The best stand-alone 21st century novel would be Asher’s The Skinner. That book literally kno...more

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Aug 26, 2012 Huw Evans rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, scifi

Ian Cormac is Neal Asher's answer to James Bond, but in a future that involves extensive artificial intelligence and the ability to become linked into these systems via an implant. This allows for almost instant access to information and enhanced decision making skills. However, the longer you are linked to the AI grid as a human being the more of your humanity you lose. Cormac has been gridlinked for longer than most and is beginning to reveal his calling by his lack of self. At over seventy he...more

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Jun 27, 2009 Michael rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book is just bad. Let's list some things:

Interstellar "dragon" that acts as histrionic and pathetic as a chubby junior high goth kid? Check.
Amateurish attempts at creating false tension by using the word "as" (as in "he moved slowly as he pulled out his gun" [my quote, not from the book:])? All over the place.
Use of the word "suddenly?" You betcha.
Horrendously awkward sexual encounters? Of course.
Seemingly random motivations and wild mood swings amongst the protagonist and antagonist? Don't...more

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Mar 26, 2011 Andreas rated it 4 of 5 stars

In many cases, when an author tries to tackle an utopian future, in which large parts of humanity are without want (if there is such a thing) and live a very good life, the effort falls flat. During the first fifty pages or so, I was indeed worried. Things soon looked up, however. First of all, there is trouble in paradise, both internal and external. Secondly, there are cool people, such as our hero, superagent Ian Cormac. Thirdly, there are cool gadgets, like self-aware shuriken. Interestingly...more

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Apr 10, 2011 Jason rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: e-books, read-2011

4 Stars

My first Neal Asher novel and it did not let me down. I have had his series on my to-read list for far too long.

Sprawling, creative, dark, and dirty space opera. Artificial Intelligence run the Polity universe, a place like ours in the near future. There is plenty of creative science in here and Asher often spends time detailing his creations. Political wars, common enemies, and god like monsters to fear.

Cormac is a good lead protagonist, a high tech 007, who is not afraid to do things h...more

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Jan 04, 2012 Ric rated it 4 of 5 stars

About 85% done according to Kindle: a brawny, masculine book about an insensitive super agent. The story is more about action than sense or motivations. Characters are introduced and killed without compassion. A cold book that reminds me of action movies such as Mission Impossible or Captain America, where the entertainment is in the blasting, furious activity, tantalizing the eyes but light on the humanity and eminently forgettable.

I realize that Asher wrote many books in the same universe and...more

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Oct 11, 2012 Harold Ogle rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: dragons, giant-monsters, science-fantasy, sf

Before this, I'd only read Asher's The Skinner, a tale of pirates, superheroes, undead, revenge, and science fantasy that impressed me greatly, so I had high hopes for Asher's first novel. I was not disappointed; Gridlinked is outstanding. Like Ian M. Banks and Alistair Reynolds, Asher writes gritty, space-operatic science fantasy about events that occur on the fringes of highly civilized, tremendously indulgent galactic human societies. They differ primarily in two regards: how they treat AI, a...more Before this, I'd only read Asher's The Skinner, a tale of pirates, superheroes, undead, revenge, and science fantasy that impressed me greatly, so I had high hopes for Asher's first novel. I was not disappointed; Gridlinked is outstanding. Like Ian M. Banks and Alistair Reynolds, Asher writes gritty, space-operatic science fantasy about events that occur on the fringes of highly civilized, tremendously indulgent galactic human societies. They differ primarily in two regards: how they treat AI, and how much they focus on plot. His story is extremely plot-driven, with action on almost every page. But Gridlinked is also a detective story of obsession, deceit and betrayal, and the plot is pretty dense, reading a lot like Dashiell Hammett. For all that I enjoyed it, this book took a surprisingly long time for me to finish: most of a busy weekend.

For Banks, AI are like gods and deservedly so, while for Reynolds, AIs are menacing, risky, and need to be carefully controlled. For Asher it's somewhere in between: AIs are naturally the caretakers of humanity, but he's at the same time very aware of the threat of these superior intelligences. In fact, he's very aware of the hazards of a life lived integrated with technology in general. One of the best aspects of the book is its dwelling on how the main protagonist, a legendary human spy for Earth Central named Ian Cormac, has been wirelessly linked to the network of AIs for so long that he's lost his ability to relate to humans. He's so far gone that the AIs are worried about him and his mental state. So he is disconnected from the network and has to re-learn how to be a normal person again (albeit still a legendary super spy), all while solving a case that threatens to disrupt human society. This theme of "How desirable is it to be networked with technology?" is addressed again and again throughout the book through various characters, including the many villains and supporting protagonists. It's very interesting, and a theme that I don't believe I've ever seen attempted in anything approaching cyberpunk (such as this novel) before now. It's refreshing to see a far future setting which doesn't present cyberpunk technology linking our brains to computers as wholly a positive thing. Hopefully this ambivalent approach will be continued in later books, unlike Ian Banks, who, after Consider Phlebas has never presented the Culture as anything but a glorious paradise, Candide's "best of all possible worlds," which gets more and more old with each subsequent Culture novel.

As I suggested at the start, it's really hard for me not to compare Banks to Reynolds to Asher, but I did enjoy this immensely on its own as well. I look forward to reading more Asher in the near future.(less)

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Dec 24, 2010 Sandino rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Тази книга Пиво ми я препоръчваше още преди години. Когато започнах да си пазарувам книги онлайн, амазона непрекъснато ми препоръчваше на Нийл Ашър книгите. Батката ми направи забележка,че напоследък чета само фентъзи и съм позарязал фантастиката и ето че и на тази книжка и дойде реда. Както разбрах в последствие тя е първата от цяла поредица с главен герой Иън Кормак- агент на земната федерация обединяваща повечето обитаеми планети. Историята се върти около борбата на Кормак с откачен лидер на...more Тази книга Пиво ми я препоръчваше още преди години. Когато започнах да си пазарувам книги онлайн, амазона непрекъснато ми препоръчваше на Нийл Ашър книгите. Батката ми направи забележка,че напоследък чета само фентъзи и съм позарязал фантастиката и ето че и на тази книжка и дойде реда. Както разбрах в последствие тя е първата от цяла поредица с главен герой Иън Кормак- агент на земната федерация обединяваща повечето обитаеми планети. Историята се върти около борбата на Кормак с откачен лидер на сепаратистка група,неговите наемници и откачен андроид. В последствие в цялата патаклама се намесват и два извънземни разума.
Книгата страшно много напомня на поредицата за Такеши Ковач на Морган, което не и прави особено добра услуга, защото Морган е с класи по- добър. В интерес на истината, мисля че тази книга е писана преди книгите на Морган, та поне не може да се каже че е взаимствал идеи. Реално оценката ми е 2 звезди и половина, шеше да е 3, дори 3 и половина, ако не беше краят. Така и не беше обяснена като хората "голямата развръзка". Реших че аз съм тъп и не вдявам и влезнах в нета да видя какво мислят другите хора прочели книгата. Почти никой не беше вдянал какво аджеба е станало. В резултат на многобройните мрънканици, Ашър е качил на сайта си алтернативен край, където е обяснил като за малоумни какво се случва всъщност. Наистина за някои от нещата се бях досетил и сам, но смея да твърдя че до други, без този алтернативен край, читателят просто няма как да достигне сам.
Въпреки всичко книгата не беше лоша и най- вероятно ще си купя и следващата от поредицата, още повече разбирам, че най- любимия ми образ от книгата се завръща. Няма да ви спойля обаче кой е той, мои верни трима читатели.(less)

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Nov 21, 2012 Simon rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: sf

Another recent author I've been meaning to try for a while. Well, I've read a short story or two but this is the first novel. This, apparently, is an introduction to the world of Ian Cormac, a legendary ECS agent on the side of law enforcement. He's had his brain hooked up to the information grid ("gridlinked") for so long that he's losing his edge and now he's expected to carry out his next mission without it in an attempt to restore his humanity. But there is more to it than meets the eye and...more

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Mar 01, 2012 Taylor Preston rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is Asher's debut novel and introduction to Earth Central Security agent Ian Cormac, whose background is later explored in the prequel, Shadow of the Scorpion. Gridlinked is a fast-paced, action-packed thrill ride across some of the roughest planets in the universe, where AIs control human civilization (the Polity), "runcible" matter transmitters whisk people from colony to colony in the blink of an eye, and an intergalactic alien called Dragon toys with humanity. There are two storylines: t...more

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Nov 20, 2012 Aurel Mihai rated it 1 of 5 stars

I was expecting to read a cross between the grittiness of Neuromancer and the epic storyline of Dune. I can only assume that's what Neal Asher was going for by writing us a cyberpunk plot full of cheap death and shady characters set in a pan-galactic universe where faster-than-light travel is a trivial matter. Unfortunately, the story is terribly rushed. Where Neuromancer and Dune are full of details that add life to those stories Gridlinked glosses over anything that isn't gore or action. Both...more

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Feb 21, 2011 Robbie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle

I quite enjoyed this book. I was recommended to me by amazon after rating a bunch of Iain M. Banks and Peter F. Hamilton books positively, and one tweet supported this, albeit in a qualified fashion.

On reflection, i pretty much concur: the science isn't hard like Egan - it's more of a general background hum behind the space opera. I enjoyed the universe, but it's no Culture. I would compare it broadly to Peter F. Hamilton, although its a lot shorter and felt a little harder to get into, although...more

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Oct 01, 2011 Jesse Whitehead rated it 2 of 5 stars

I’ve been trying lately to pin down, in some quantifiable way, how I read books. When I first started my blog I started giving everything a rating. It didn’t make sense after awhile so I abandoned it. I decided that my reviews have to stand on their own. So I’ve been trying to find a way to describe why some books fill me with pure hatred and others with pure glee. For instance I don’t know why I love Robert Jordan’s books but read Dan Brown with the kind of loathing that is actually joy at all...more I’ve been trying lately to pin down, in some quantifiable way, how I read books. When I first started my blog I started giving everything a rating. It didn’t make sense after awhile so I abandoned it. I decided that my reviews have to stand on their own. So I’ve been trying to find a way to describe why some books fill me with pure hatred and others with pure glee. For instance I don’t know why I love Robert Jordan’s books but read Dan Brown with the kind of loathing that is actually joy at all the horrible things I have to say about it.

Everybody has a limited attention span. Some people it’s longer than others. When I’m sitting in class it takes about ten minutes for me to start thinking about something else. Other people have shorter or longer attention spans. They say for children that the rule of thumb is about one minute per year of age – so I have the attention span of a ten year old – or something. At some point that breaks down. However, when I’m reading a book that I like reading my attention span becomes hours.

So I’ve started to pay attention to how I read a book. Do I look at my watch frequently, or look up or stop to count the pages until the end of the chapter? Do I sometimes read twenty minutes while thinking about something completely different and have no idea what I just read? Those are all signs that something is not right with this book. Sometimes I can identify what it is that is keeping me from really getting lost in the words. Sometimes I can’t.

Very few authors can achieve this to the extent that I lose track of time. I could probably list them all on my two hands – though it would take awhile to scrub the ink off.

Gridlinked is one of those books that I just couldn’t get into and I think I know why.

The story is about Ian Cormac, legendary ECS agent and the psychotic killer who is hunting him down. There’s also a bit about some weird aliens and giant explosions. Ian Cormac is basically James Bond in the future. He goes undercover by using his real name – even though he’s famous all over the galaxy and he stands in the middle of a hail of bullets and shoots the bad guys right in the face without ever getting hit once.

Sometimes I get the idea that the whole thing is supposed to be a farcical play on spy movie tropes but if it is it’s too buried for it to be clear. It feels more like it’s just a series of those tropes glued together in a science fiction universe – albeit a well thought one.

The writing, though, is probably the most atrocious thing about this book. Many of the sentences were so awkward that I had to read them twice before I believed that they actually passed an editor. There’s a great deal of maid-and-butler dialoge only thinly disguised as ‘explain it to me again’ which is dull and annoying. Other than the three or four main characters the rest are all indistinguishable from each other and serve only to either get injured or make awkward narrative suggestions such as ‘lets start calling this alien Scar so we don’t have to keep saying “the other alien” all the time.’ Yes this really happened.

The bad guy is an evil psychopath who kills anybody whenever he feels like it a la Darth Vader except when they are characters that we are supposed to care about, and then he miraculously lets them live when they offend him. He even has some kind of giant metal brain attachment on the side of his head and sticking out his eye so that he will look all villainy.

This book suffered a lot in translation as well. It was written in English and I read it in English but it was written in British English and I don’t read British English. Words were misspelled and every past tense verb ended in –t instead of –ed. These aren’t the author’s fault as much as the editor and publisher but they made it harder to read. In American English saying “he leant against the wall” means he borrowed something with the wall as collateral.

Many of the chapters started with short descriptions of the technology in the book in the form of excerpts from fictional encyclopedias and journals. These were actually quite interesting and entertaining. I found myself frequently looking to see when the next chapter started so I could read another of these sections. Which is another problem, I suppose. The pre-chapter discussions were more interesting than the book.

In all I don’t think I will read this author again. His style is so over the top that he made me think I was reading a Dan Brown science fiction novel. At least he didn’t have the half-page cliffhanger chapters. Small mercies.(less)

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Dec 12, 2010 Shannon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Imagine you took a James Bond style secret agent, implanted an iPhone in his head for thirty years, and then took it away from him because he never paid attention to you at dinner any more. That’s what’s happened to the hero of this book, Ian Cormac. Being gridlinked is good and makes humans vastly more useful at life, but apparently long-term use make its users less “human” and bad at empathy. Seems like someone forgot to file a big report.

What seems apparent from the start is that one should n...more

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Nov 09, 2012 Althepal rated it 5 of 5 stars

Unlike other reviewers i believe Asher is better than Bear and ranks with Iain M Banks. I think gridlinked is superb.. its an early novel and its fantastic for an an early novel. great characters.. love interest, 3 threads of plot , 4 contending parties, and who is with who scenarios... builds to a climax with the clever reader believing they know whats going to happen and a bit of an extra bonus twist or comeuppance at the end. Dont compare it with the spatterjay series... its great the author...more

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Oct 13, 2010 Ross rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Nov 12, 2010 Jim rated it 3 of 5 stars

I must have like this because I just ordered the sequel. But, Gridlinked is more horror than space opera. Asher spends over half of the book, making his protagonist, Ian Cormac weaker, (disconnecting him from instant information and communication after 30 years of depending on it , losing varoius troups and equipment, for example) while his antagonist evil genius, Arian Pelter, is made smarter, stronger, better armed, better informed and heavily backed at each step before the inevitable final co...more

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Feb 09, 2010 Aneel rated it 1 of 5 stars

I found this pretty disappointing. The world didn't make much sense to me, which I think is a pretty bad failure for SF. Why are these people squabbling over petty change when they have energy surpluses large enough to quickly terraform ice planets? Why do the AIs let humans make the important choices? If linking human and AI minds leads to such amazing advances, why has it only been done once? If the main character's antique weapon is so powerful, why doesn't everyone use things like that?

Overl...more

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Oct 20, 2012 Dustin Wyatt rated it 3 of 5 stars

Asher creates a universe that just rates an "OK" from me. Like another reviewer mentioned, Asher doesn't seem to realize who his best characters are so he doesn't spend as much time as he should on them.

Asher also fails to realize what the availability of the type of technology he describes means for the way things would work. (To be fair, most sci-fi suffers from this same shortfalling. (view spoiler)...more

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Feb 15, 2013 Mattalyst rated it 5 of 5 stars

The premise is so unpromising - "James Bond in Space!" - that even Asher feels the need to have a character mock it in an informational interlude. And yes, there's a few moments when I wished for slightly stronger female characters or slightly fewer juvenile-wish-fulfillment details. But this is Daniel Craig in space, not Pierce Brosnan, and Asher's writing is sometimes shockingly good. He writes at a high vocabulary level, in a richly detailed world of plausible extrapolations, and is capable o...more

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Mar 18, 2012 Felicia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

Taking a break from fantasy/romance/mystery, i picked this book up because my brother recommended it. And it was TOTALLY worth it! If you read a lot of my reviews you know I adore Iain Banks' work, and this book felt like a cousin of his work. Basically we're dealing with a deep future society depended on vast machines, and an overarching mystery of a sabateur, a James-Bond-like main character, and a side-plot of a psychopath's ruthless need for revenge at any cost. I dunno how to describe it mu...more

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Apr 12, 2011 Princessjay rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi-fantasy

Written as a breathless sci-fi thriller, with shifting perspectives to tell the story of Earth Security agent a la 007, Ian Cormac, as he is re-finding his own humanity after 30 years of mindlink to AI. Hounded by the inexplicably-insane terrorist Arian Pelter, Cormac investigates the malfunctioning and explosion of a runcible (teleportation devices which renders time and space meaningless) that destroyed an entire planet.

Set in a world ran by AIs that easily passed version x of the Turing test;...more

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Dec 06, 2010 Bill Hayes rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

Great fast paced space opera. Asher does a wonderful job creating the world of the Polity (which is currently the backdrop to five of his books). It contains AI's (one overseeing Earth), many types of battle droids, the Golem 25 androids that look human but have many machine-like abilities (super human but not invincible), cyborgs (machine enhanced humans), some truly horrific alien creatures, and a somewhat mysterious main character special agent Ian Cormac.
The Polity novels are my second favor...more

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Dec 22, 2012 Adam rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

First of all, a big shout-out to Ellen, the owner of Colophon Books in Ithaca, NY, who recommended Neal Asher to me when I was in her shop earlier this year. (You can check out the shop's website at www.colophonbooks.us)

Gridlinked starts out with a bang and I really enjoyed it from the outset. However, I got really bogged down in the middle section of the book and it took me forever to finish. I finally finished it while traveling over the course of the last couple of weeks and remembered what...more

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About Neal Asher

I’ve been an engineer, barman, skip lorry driver, coalman, boat window manufacturer, contract grass cutter and builder. Now I write science fiction books, and am slowly getting over the feeling that someone is going to find me out, and can call myself a writer without wincing and ducking my head. As professions go, I prefer this one: I don’t have to clock-in, change my clothes after work, nor scru...more

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“Cormac was completely aware that he was being manipulated, but how he could not see. He reckoned that when he did find out, the surprise would be a nasty one. That was how it usually went.” — 5 people liked it

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avg rating	preview: Gridlinked Goodreads rating: 3.91 (2898 ratings)
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98046.Gridlinked?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1316131031l/98046.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98046.Gridlinked?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Gridlinked by Neal Asher[/url]

Gridlinked (Agent Cormac #1)

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