Shadow of the Scorpion: A Novel of the Polity - Softcover

Asher, Neal

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1597801399 ISBN 13: 9781597801393

Publisher: Night Shade, 2008

Synopsis

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.

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About this title

About the Author

Neal Asher is a science fiction writer whose work has been nominated for both the Philip K. Dick and the British Fantasy Society awards. He has published more than fifteen books, many set within his Polity” universe, including Gridlinked, The Skinner, and Dark Intelligence. He divides his time between Essex and a home in Crete.

From Booklist

Here Asher retreats to the formative years of his series hero Ian Cormac to reveal formative  events in two time lines to reader and character alike. Growing up in the last years of the Prador war,  Ian deals with the loss of his father, the too-terrible-to-remember horrors his army-medic brother has seen, and a war drone that looks like a scorpion and appears in some strange places. Reaching young manhood, he signs up with the Earth Central Security force and heads out to a world devastated by the Prador. While guarding a Prador crash site, he is accidentally caught up in uncovering a separatist movement, an involvement that costs him comrades and whatever innocence he may have had left. Discovering his capacity for violence, he chases down the most dangerous of the separatists and learns the significance of that scorpion war drone he vaguely recalls from childhood. This slim volume that greatly develops Cormac’s character is an excellent window into the world—the Polity universe—that Asher has created in the Ian Cormac and Prador novels. --Regina Schroeder

About this edition

• Publisher: Night Shade
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1597801399
• ISBN 13: 9781597801393
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 242