Gridlinked

Good modern science fiction in a rather militaristic mould. It's essentially two interwoven tales, one of a special agent investigating a nuclear explosion, and the other about a terrorist trying to get revenge on him - the two stories remain almost entirely separate save at the beginning and end of the book. The former is probably the better of the two, with Arian Pelter being overshadowed as a villain both by Dragon and by his own robotic henchman, Mr Crane. Still, both are good, and Asher successfully racks up the tension, along with the body count.

Asher weaves together an interesting and believable universe, with a lot of detail behind the action scenes. It's well-written, fast paced stuff, with plenty of room for expansion in future books (and, indeed, there are a number). I'm normally not so keen on militaristic SF, but this one works.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. It's in the Bond mode with some similarities to [author:Richard Morgan]'s Takeshi Kovac books.

The plot raced along and contained many twists some were easy to predict, others came out of nowhere. Making Ian Cormac someone who struggled to relate to the world was very helpful in drawing in the reader.

Premise was intriguing but did not at all appreciate the grittiness, overt sexual references, foul language, bloodiness/violence. DNF What's even more disheartening is that I'm turned off the whole “Agent Cormac” series. Are the other Polity books similar?