Weaponized

I was so eager to read Asher's new Polity book, that I ordered it early from the UK (currently it's available as an ebook in the US). Alas, I was somewhat disappointed. Ursula opts out of civilization to lead a group of long-lived, and thus disaffected, colonists to settle on a world where evolution has gone into high gear such that every organism is fantastically dangerous and out to get humans, including the plants, thus, it's Harry Harrison's “Deathworld” warmed over. (I hope that author's estate gets at least a nod.) There's lot of good set-up and seemingly interesting ideas we're teased with, but unfortunately, the bulk of the book goes from one encounter to the next with the ultra-predators, the unfortunately named cacoraptors, each encounter described in agonizing (and eventually uninteresting) detail. The raptors can morph instantly from a dinosaur to a burrowing worm to a humanoid and are ridiculously overpowered, and even with their own superpowers constantly enhancing, it's not clear why the humans simply aren't stomped out, except, of course: For the plot. This quote from p. 266 pretty much describes the repetitive action in the whole book: “He was right - the creatures were too tough and the weapons he had weren't powerful enough.” To make things worse, Asher divides each chapter into Present, Near Past, and Past. Now, of course I know that telling narratives out of order is a feature of modern literature, but Asher really drops the ball with this, the Present chapters give away what happens in the Past narratives, and the Past narratives rarely enlighten us or add any reveals - with the net result of making the story seem even more repetitive. It redeems itself toward the end, where things finally come to a conclusion with reveals that honestly, don't completely surprise (that may be intended, though). For those with an aversion to violence, there is violence on nearly every page here, although it struck me as cartoon violence, your mileage may vary. It was an “okay” book, but disappointing in many respects.