Book Reviews, Neal Asher - Gridlinked ****, The Skinner ***** Asher has previously published four other works, two novellas and two short story collections, Gridlinked is his first full length novel. Ian Cormac works for Earth Central Security, he's hard, dangerous, and losing all sense of human perspective as he has been permanently hard wired to an AI ('gridlinked') for over two decades, thus his enigmatic boss thinks it's a good idea to unplug him, then send him on his hardest mission ever. As Cormac zips around trying to discover who, or what, has destroyed a part of the inter-planetary teleportation grid known as runcible stations, he is pursued by the vengeful and possibly insane separatist terrorist Arian Pelter and his definitely insane cyborg assistant, the frightening Mr. Crane. A super powerful alien entity called Dragon, a creature composed of four globes of pink flesh, each a kilometer across, Dragon also appears to be verging on the barking mad and having a vastly powerful alien playing to its own agenda makes Cormacs job even harder. Gridlinked fairly zips along in good space opera style, Asher isn't looking to challenge our preconceptions of the modern world with his writing, he's looking to entertain us, hurrah! Bombs, bodies and battles abound as the arms race between Cormac and Pelter heats up and leads to a violent and fairly satisfying ending. Welcome to Spatterjay........where sudden death is the normal way of life. The resident lifeforms of Spatterjay have evolved in tandem with a virus that ensures their survival under almost any circumstances, you can catch a fish, skin it, fillet it, drop the skeleton back in the water and it will swim off and start to regrow itself. This works for humans too, Hoopers they're called, the oldest, most dangerous Hooper of them all is the Skinner, so named because that's what he does to people. Onto this world come Sable Keech, a 7 century old walking corpse, Janer, a man carrying two hornets in a glass box (obviously he isn't carrying bees, although they are sentient they have no past or future tense and are therefore very difficult to understand) and Erlin, who is just possibly looking for love. On a planet where the inhabitants just won't die, Asher lets his most violent tendencies roam free, the resulting action is spellbinding and hilarious. Hilarious you ask ? Just wait 'til you encounter the single, nay bloody minded ex war drone Sniper. As Keech roams the planet searching for the last of the people that killed him seven hundred years ago more players enter the fray, Ebulan the arachnid Prador captain, his crew of cored human zombies and the brainwiped woman implanted with the personality of one of Keech's killers arrive with all guns blazing, plus alien mercenaries with more guns, and remember, if you stop moving for a moment, something on Spatterjay will try to eat you, and don't go swimming, ever. A hugely violent and entertaining read, it's right up there with Consider Phlebus. The action never stops and leads to the final climactic battle with body parts everywhere, and you had better shoot that dismembered arm again, it aint dead yet!