Neal Asher has 33 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 7 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 145 ratings. The most-rated is Gridlinked.
Gridlinked
Summary
In outer space you can never feel sure that your adversary is altogether human. The runcible buffers on Samarkand have been mysteriously sabotaged, killing many thousands and destroying a terraforming project. Agent Cormac must reach it by ship to begin an investigation. But Cormac has incurred the wrath of a vicious psychopath called Pelter, who is prepared to follow him across the galaxy with a terrifying android in tow. Despite the sub-zero temperature of Samarkand, Cormac discovers signs of life: they are two 'dracomen', alien beasts contrived by an extra-galactic entity calling itself 'Dragon', which is a huge creature consisting of four conjoined spheres of flesh each a kilometre in diameter. Caught between the byzantine wiles of the Dragon and the lethal fury of Pelter, Cormac needs to skip very nimbly indeed to rescue the Samarkand project and protect his own life. Gridlinked is the first sci-fi thriller in Neal Asher's compelling Agent Cormac series.
©2009 Neal Asher (P)2017 Macmillan Digital Audio
War Factory
Summary
One seeks judgment, another faces damnation and one man will have his revenge.... Thorvald Spear is losing his mind as he drowns in dark memories that aren't his own. Penny Royal, rogue artificial intelligence, has linked Spear with the stored personalities of those it's murdered. And whether the AI seeks redemption or has some more sinister motive, Spear needs to destroy it. He feels the anger of the dead and shares their pain. As Spear tracks the AI across a hostile starscape, he has company. Sverl, an alien prador, has been warped by Penny Royal and hungers to confront it. But will the AI's pursuers destroy each other or hunt it together? Sverl's prador enemies aren't far behind either. They plan to use his transition to prove human meddling, triggering a devastating new war. Clues suggest Penny Royal's heading for the defective war factory that made it. So allies and enemies converge, heading for the biggest firestorm that sector of space has ever seen. But will Spear secure vengeance for his unquiet dead?
©2017 Neal Asher (P)2017 Macmillan Digital Audio
Prador Moon
Summary
Neal Asher takes on first contact, Polity style. This original novel recounts the first contact between the aggressive Prador aliens, and the Polity Collective as it is forced to retool its society to a war footing. The overwhelming brute force of the Prador dreadnaughts causes several worlds and space stations to be overrun. Prador Moon follows the initial Polity defeats, to the first draws, and culminates in what might be the first Polity victory, told from the point of view of two unlikely heroes.
©2006 Neal Asher (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Dark Intelligence
Summary
One man will transcend death to seek vengeance. One woman will transform herself to gain power. And no one will emerge unscathed.... Thorvald Spear wakes in hospital, where he finds he's been brought back from the dead. What's more, he died in a human vs. alien war which ended a whole century ago. But when he relives his traumatic final moments, he finds the spark to keep on living. That spark is vengeance. Trapped and desperate on a world surrounded by alien Prador forces, Spear had seen a rescue ship arriving. But instead of providing backup, Penny Royal, the AI within the destroyer, turned rogue. It annihilated friendly forces in a frenzy of destruction, and years later it's still free. Spear vows to track it across worlds and do whatever it takes to bring it down. Isobel Satomi ran a successful crime syndicate. But after competitors attacked, she needed more power. Yet she got more than she bargained for when she negotiated with Penny Royal. She paid it to turn her part AI herself, but the upgrades hid a horrifying secret. The Dark AI had triggered a transformation in Isobel that would turn her into a monster, rapidly evolving into something far from human. Spear hires Isobel to take him to the Penny Royal AI's last known whereabouts. But he cheats her in the process, and he becomes a target for her vengeance. And as she evolves further into a monstrous predator, rage soon wins over reason. Will Spear finish his hunt before he becomes the hunted? This is the first volume in a no-holds-barred adventure set in Asher's popular Polity universe.
©2017 Neal Asher (P)2017 Macmillan Digital Audio
Brass Man
Summary
Brass Man is the third novel in Neal Asher's popular Agent Cormac series. On the primitive world Cull, a knight errant called Anderson hunts a dragon, not knowing that elsewhere is a resurrected brass killing machine, Mr Crane, assisting in a similar hunt. Learning that this old enemy still lives, agent Cormac pursues while scientist Mika begins discovering the horrifying truth about an ancient alien technology. Each day is a survival struggle for the people of Cull. Ferocious insectile monsters roam their planet as they try to escape to their forefathers' starship, still orbiting far above them. But an entity with questionable motives, calling itself Dragon, assists them with genetic by-blows created out of humans and the hideous local monsters. And now the supposedly geologically inactive planet itself is increasingly suffering earthquakes....
©2009 Neal Asher (P)2017 Macmillan Digital Audio
Shadow of the Scorpion
Summary
Raised to adulthood during the end of the war, between the human Polity and a vicious alien race, the Prador, Ian Cormac is haunted by childhood memories of a sinister scorpion-shaped war drone and the burden of losses he doesn’t remember. Cormac signs up with Earth Central Security and is sent out to help restore and maintain order on worlds devastated by the war. There, he discovers that though the Prador remain as murderous as ever, they are not anywhere near as treacherous or dangerous as some of his fellow humans - some closer to him than he would like. Amidst the ruins left by wartime genocides, Cormac will discover in himself a cold capacity for violence, and learn some horrible truths about his own past while trying to stay alive on his course of vengeance.
©2008 Neal Asher (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Polity Agent
Summary
Polity Agent is the fourth novel in Neal Asher's popular Agent Cormac series. From 800 years in the future, a runcible gate is opened into the Polity. Those coming through it have been tasked with taking the alien 'Maker' back to its home civilization in the Small Magellanic cloud. Once these refugees are safely through, the gate itself is rapidly shut down - because something alien is pursuing them. From those who get through, agent Cormac learns that the Maker civilization has been destroyed by a pernicious virus known as the Jain technology. This raises questions: why was Dragon, a massive bio-construct of the Makers, really sent to the Polity; why did a Jain node suddenly end up in the hands of someone who could do the most damage with it? Meanwhile, an entity called the Legate is distributing toxic Jain nodes...and a renegade attack ship, The King of Hearts, has encountered something very nasty outside the Polity itself....
©2009 Neal Asher (P)2017 Macmillan Digital Audio
The Warship
Summary
In this second volume of Rise of the Jain, Neal Asher takes us on a thrilling ride into interstellar politics and impending war. Their nemesis lies in wait.... Orlandine has destroyed the alien Jain super-soldier by deploying an actual black hole. And now that same weapon hoovers up clouds of lethal Jain technology, swarming within the deadly accretion disc’s event horizon. All seems just as she planned. Yet behind her back, forces incite rebellion on her home world, planning her assassination. Earth Central, humanity’s ruling intelligence, knows Orlandine was tricked into releasing her weapon and fears the Jain are behind it. The prador king knows this too – and both foes gather fleets of warships to surround the disc. The alien Client is returning to the accretion disc to save the last of her kind, buried on a ship deep within it. She upgrades her vast weapons platform in preparation and she’ll need it. Her nemesis also waits within the disc’s swirling dusts – and the Jain have committed genocide before. The Warship is set in Neal Asher's popular Polity universe.
©2019 Neal Asher (P)2019 Macmillan Publishers International Ltd
The Line of Polity
Summary
The Line of Polity is the second audiobook in Neal Asher's popular Agent Cormac series. Outlink station Miranda has been destroyed by a nanomycelium, and the very nature of this sabotage suggests that the alien bioconstruct Dragon - a creature as untrustworthy as it is gigantic - is somehow involved. Sent out on a titanic Polity dreadnought, the Occam Razor, agent Cormac must investigate the disaster. Meanwhile, on the remote planet Masada, the long-term rebellion can never rise aboveground, as the slave population is subjugated by orbital laser arrays controlled by the Theocracy in their cylinder worlds, and by the fact that they cannot safely leave their labour compounds. For the wilderness of Masada lacks breathable air...and out there roam monstrous predators called hooders and siluroynes, not to mention the weird and terrible gabbleducks.
©2017 Neal Asher (P)2017 Macmillan Digital Audio
The Human
Summary
The Human is the final, thrilling, book in Neal Asher’s Rise of the Jain trilogy. Their enemy seems unbeatable. But humanity is indomitable.... A Jain warship has risen from a prison five million years old, wielding a hoard of lethal technology. Its goal is to catch their old enemy, the Client, and it will destroy all who stand in its path.Humanity and the prador thought their mutual nemesis – the bane of so many races – was long extinct. But the Jain are back and Orlandine must prepare humanity’s defence. She needs the Client’s knowledge to counter this ancient threat. But is the enemy of your enemy a friend? Earth Central even looks to the prador for alliance. These old enemies must now learn to trust one another, or face utter annihilation. As the Jain warship crosses the galaxy, it seems unstoppable. Human and prador forces alike struggle to withstand its devastating weaponry – far in advance of their own. And Orlandine’s life’s work has been to neutralise Jain technology, so if she can’t triumph, no one can. But could she become what she’s vowed to destroy?
©2020 Neal Asher (P)2020 Macmillan Publishers International Ltd 2020
The Soldier
Summary
Humanity, artificial intelligences, and monstrous aliens clash over control of deadly technology in this explosive beginning to Neal Asher’s newest Polity series. In a far corner of space, on the very borders between humanity’s Polity worlds and the kingdom of the vicious crab-like prador, is an immediate threat to all sentient life: an accretion disc, a solar system designed by the long-dead Jain race and swarming with living technology powerful enough to destroy entire civilizations. Neither the Polity or the prador want the other in full control of the disc, so they’ve placed an impartial third party in charge of the weapons platform guarding the technology from escaping into the galaxy: Orlandine, a part-human, part-AI haiman. She’s assisted by Dragon, a mysterious, spaceship-sized alien entity who has long been suspicious of Jain technology and who suspects the disc is a trap lying-in-wait. Meanwhile, the android Angel is planning an attack on the Polity, and is searching for a terrible weapon to carry out his plans - a Jain super-soldier. But what exactly the super-soldier is, and what it could be used for if it fell into the wrong hands, will bring Angel and Orlandine’s missions to a head in a way that could forever change the balance of power in the Polity universe. In The Soldier, British science fiction writer Neal Asher kicks off another Polity-based trilogy in signature fashion, concocting a mind-melting plot filled with far-future technology, lethal weaponry, and bizarre alien creations.
©2018 Neal Asher (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Infinity Engine
Summary
Infinity Engine is the third and final audiobook in the Transformation series, by best-selling science fiction author Neal Asher, following Dark Intelligence and War Factory. A man battles for his life, two AIs vie for supremacy and a civilization hangs in the balance.... Several forces now pursue rogue artificial intelligence Penny Royal, hungry for revenge or redemption. And the Brockle is the most dangerous of all. This criminal swarm-robot AI has escaped confinement and is upgrading itself, becoming ever more powerful in anticipation of a showdown. Events also escalate aboard the war factory. Here Thorvald Spear, alien prador, and an assassin drone struggle to stay alive, battling insane AIs and technology gone wild. Then the Weaver arrives - last remnant of a race that died out two million years ago. But what could it contribute to Penny Royal's tortuous plans? And beyond the war factory a black hole conceals a tantalising secret which could destroy the Polity. As AIs, humans and prador clash at its boundary, will anything survive their explosive final confrontation?
©2017 Neal Asher (P)2017 Macmillan Digital Audio
The Soldier
Summary
Her mission is vital. Her failure is unthinkable. A hidden corner of space is swarming with lethal alien technology, a danger to all sentient life. It's guarded by Orlandine, who must keep it contained at any cost - as it has the power to destroy entire civilizations. She schemes from her state-of-the-art weapons station, with only an alien intelligence to share her vigil. But she doesn't share everything with Dragon.... Orlandine is hatching a plan to obliterate this technology, removing its threat forever. For some will do anything to exploit this ancient weaponry, created by a long-dead race called the Jain. This includes activating a Jain supersoldier, which may breach even Orlandine's defences. Meanwhile, humanity and the alien prador empire keep a careful watch over this sector of space, as neither can allow the other to claim its power. However, things are about to change. The Jain might not be as dead as they seemed - and interstellar war is just a heartbeat away. The Soldier is the first novel in the Rise of the Jain series by best-selling science fiction author Neal Asher.
©2018 Neal Asher (P)2018 Macmillan Digital Audio
Line War
Summary
The Line War is the fifth audiobook in Neal Asher's popular Agent Cormac series. The Polity is under attack from a 'melded' AI entity with control of the lethal Jain technology, yet the attack seems to have no coherence. When one of Erebus' wormships kills millions on the world of Klurhammon, a high-tech agricultural world of no real tactical significance, agent Ian Cormac is sent to investigate, though he is secretly struggling to control a new ability no human being should possess...and beginning to question the motives of his AI masters. Further attacks and seemingly indiscriminate slaughter ensue but serve only to bring some of the most dangerous individuals in the Polity into the war. Mr Crane, the indefatigable brass killing machine, sets out for vengeance while Orlandine, a vastly augmented haiman who herself controls Jain technology, seeks a weapon of appalling power and finds allies from an ancient war. Meanwhile Mika, scientist and Dragon expert, is again kidnapped by that unfathomable alien entity and dragged into the heart of things: to wake the makers of Jain technology from their five-million-year slumber. But Erebus' attacks are not so indiscriminate after all and could very well herald the end of the Polity itself....
©2017 Neal Asher (P)2017 Macmillan Digital Audio
The Voyage of Sable Keech
Summary
The Voyage of the Sable Keech is the second book in Neal Asher's Spatterjay series, following on from The Skinner. Sable Keech is a walking dead man. Was he resurrected because he was infected by the Spatterjay virus, or it took place late in a tank of seawater? Taylor Bloc wants to know the truth. He also wants more – adulation, power, control – and will go to any lengths to achieve them. An ancient hive mind has sent an agent to this uncertain world. Does it merely want to obtain the poison 'sprine' that is crucial to immortality? Erlin, still faced with the ennui of immortality, is interrupted by an angry whelkus titanicus, and begins a strange journey. Deep in the ocean the Spatterjay virus has wrought a terrible change that will affect them all. Something long-dormant is breaking free. And Sniper, its Warden, finally receives his new drone shell. It's better than his old one: powerful engines, more lethal weapons, thicker armour. He's going to need them.
©2009 Neal Asher (P)2018 Macmillan Digital Audio
Orbus
Summary
Will deadly secrets stay concealed? Old Captain Orbus commandeered a ship to flee Spatterjay, desperate to escape the violent planet. Orbus’ alien enemy, the Prador Vrell, is also moving on. The Spatterjay virus mutated him into something even more dangerous. And he’s hunting the Prador King himself - who sought to kill him, to bury the secret of their similar transformations. Orbus and Vrell clash in the Graveyard, a lawless zone where the Prador have seized a key space station. Official action by humanity or Prador would end peace, as a centuries-long cold war simmers. So Earth commands Orbus to destroy the station, even as the King recruits a monster to exterminate Vrell. But their actions will awaken an intelligence that annihilated civilisations, as it stirs after five million years....
©2009 Neal Asher (P)2018 Macmillan Digital Audio
The Technician
Summary
In Neal Asher's The Technician, the Theocracy has been dead for 20 years, and the Polity rules on Masada - but it is an order that the rebels of the Tidy Squad cannot accept, and the iconic Jeremiah Tombs is top of their hit list. Tombs, meanwhile, has escaped his sanatorium. His insanity must be cured, because the near-mythical hooder, called 'the Technician', that attacked him all those years ago did something to his mind even the AIs fail to understand. Tombs might possess information about the suicide of an entire alien race. It's up to the war drone Amistad to discover this information, with the help of an ex-rebel Commander, the black AI Penny Royal and the amphidapt Chanter. Meanwhile, in deep space, the mechanism the Atheter used to reduce themselves to animals stirs from slumber and begins to power up its weapons....
©2017 Neal Asher (P)2017 Macmillan Digital Audio
The Skinner
Summary
Is immortality worth the price? The savage ocean planet of Spatterjay draws visitors with very different agendas. Erlin is immortal and seeks a reason to keep living. Janer hosts a hive mind, which paid him to find this planet. And Keech is an agent of Earth who’s been dead for 700 years – but still hunts a notorious criminal. On Spatterjay’s vast waterscapes, only the Old Captains risk the native life forms and their voracious appetites. However, they are now barely human. And somewhere out there Keech’s target – the Skinner – runs wild. Keech pursues the Skinner for atrocities committed in a centuries-past war, fought with the alien Prador. But one of these Prador is fast approaching Spatterjay to exterminate witnesses to his own war crimes. And he won’t spare its visitors.
©2009 Neal Asher (P)2018 Macmillan Digital Audio
Zero Point
Summary
Earth’s Zero Asset citizens no longer face extermination from orbit. Thanks to Alan Saul, the Committee’s network of control is a smoking ruin and its robotic enforcers lie dormant. But power abhors a vacuum and, scrambling from the wreckage, comes the ruthless Serene Galahad. She must act while the last vestiges of Committee infrastructure remain intact and she has the means to ensure command is hers. On Mars, Var Delex fights for the survival of Antares Base, while the Argus Space Station hurls towards the red planet. And she knows whomever, or whatever, trashed Earth is still aboard. Var must save the base, while also dealing with the first signs of rebellion. And aboard Argus Station, Alan Saul’s mind has expanded into the local computer network. In the process, he uncovers the ghastly experiments of the Humanoid Unit Development, the possibility of eternal life, and a madman who may hold the keys to interstellar flight. But Earth’s agents are closer than Saul thinks, and the killing will soon begin.
©2013 Neal Asher (P)2013 Audible Inc.
Jupiter War
Summary
Jupiter War is the third audiobook in Neal Asher's near-future science-fiction Owner series. Alan Saul is now part human and part machine, and our solar system isn't big enough to hold him. He craves the stars but can't leave yet. His sister, Var, is trapped on Mars, on the wrong side of a rebellion, and Saul's human side won't let her die. He must leave Argus Station to stage a dangerous rescue - but mutiny is brewing onboard, as Saul's robots make his crew feel increasingly redundant. Serene Galahad will do anything to prevent Saul's escape. Earth's ruthless dictator hides her crimes from a cowed populace as she readies new warships for pursuit. She aims to crush her enemy in a terrifying display of interstellar violence. Meanwhile, the Scourge limps back to earth, its crew slaughtered, its mission to annihilate Saul a disaster. There are survivors, but while one seeks Galahad's death, Clay Ruger will negotiate for his life. Events build to a climax as Ruger holds humanity's greatest asset - seeds to rebuild a dying Earth. This stolen Gene Bank data is offered at a price, but what will Galahad pay for humanity's future?
©2017 Neal Asher (P)2017 Macmillan Digital Audio