Brass Man by Neal Asher
reviewed by Nathan Brazil
It begins with a salvage vessel, whose pilot is seeking fortune out beyond the limits of Polity-controlled space. He finds an asteroid, rich in rare metals, and containing the wreck of a dreadnought, which proves too tempting to resist. Meanwhile, on a world named Cull, outside of Polity space, an old timer named Anderson and his young protégé, Tergal, are on a mission to kill a dragon.

Cowl by Neal Asher
reviewed by Greg L. Johnson
It is a dark, brooding time-travel novel, full of graphic violence and characters willing to go to extremes for what they believe in. There is a war going on, a war fought through shifting time-lines and more-or-less probable versions of reality. The stakes are the future, and past of humanity. The problem is trying to figure out who, if anyone, is telling the truth.

Gridlinked by Neal Asher
reviewed by Lisa DuMond
This future is no place for the faint-hearted. This is a world where a terrorist blast is as likely to take you out as a slight miscalculation passing through the runcibles that provide instantaneous galactic travel. Don't worry, though, everything is all right, because this universe is run by flawless AIs... Except that just such a mishap occurred, virtually obliterating a whole planet. How such a thing could happen and who will be held responsible are questions that Earth Central has sent in super-agent Cormac to answer.

The Line of Polity by Neal Asher
reviewed by Lisa DuMond
In the myriad worlds that make up the Polity and those on the fringe, can be considerably worse than we soft humans can imagine. After the lethal-at-every-turn Spatterjay of The Skinner, anyone would feel safe in assuming no place could be more deadly, more hostile to human life... Ah! But we all would be sadly wrong. Of course, we had never even heard of Masada, then, so how could we imagine anything more chilling? Little did we know the author was just biding his time until he was ready to take us to this hell-hole, where people cannot even live on the surface without oxygen or breathers.