War Factory
Ratings5
Average rating3.6
15
Ratings5
Average rating3.6
Thorvald Spear, resurrected from his death over a hundred years earlier, continues to hunt Penny Royal, the rogue AI and dangerous war criminal on the run from Polity forces. Beyond the Graveyard, a lawless and deadly area in deep space, Spear follows the trail of several enemy Prador, the crab-like alien species with a violent history of conflict with humanity. Sverl, a Prador genetically modified by Penny Royal and slowly becoming human, pursues Cvorn, a Prador harboring deep hatred for the Polity looking to use him and other hybrids to reignite the dormant war with mankind. Blite, captain of a bounty hunting ship, hands over two prisoners and valuable memplants from Penny Royal to the Brockle, a dangerous forensics entity under strict confinement on a Polity spaceship that quickly takes a keen interest in the corrupted AI and its unclear motives. Penny Royal meanwhile continues to pull all the strings in the background, keeping the Polity at bay and seizing control of an attack ship. It seeks Factory Station Room 101, a wartime manufacturing space station believed to be destroyed. What does it want with the factory? And will Spear find the rogue AI before it gets there? War Factory, the second book in the Transformation trilogy, is signature space opera from Neal Asher: breakneck pacing, high-tech science, bizarre alien creatures, and gritty, dangerous far-future worlds.
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The second book in the trilogy starts off slow, dealing largely with the repercussions of the previous book and following its large cast of diverse viewpoint characters. Things definitely hot up towards the end, though as we head to a major showdown that manages to tie up quite a few of the plotlines - something that makes this more satisfying than the middle book of a trilogy often is. In between, we do get some inventive ideas, some of them to do with the ramifications of how FTL travel works in this universe, others providing further insight into Prador biology (and mating habits).
A downside is that's hard to identify with many of the viewpoint characters, some of whom are really just along for the ride, dragged along by Penny Royal's schemes, witnessing rather than acting. There are enough good points to make this enjoyable, but it lacks the freshness of some Asher's earlier works... which may simply be a product of how far along we are by this point.
