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A review by distgenius
Prador Moon by Neal Asher
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
Where to start, where to start…
Prador Moon, and Asher’s work with the Polity universe in general, is oft talked about as a dark, violent sci-fi series with body horror. The violence is there, and to an extent there is some body horror, but this particular work is much more bland than expected.
Which is a shame, because if the expectation is something like Aliens but in novel form, this book did not deliver on that. The violence was intense but brief, and body horror just didn’t exist at all. It is even hard to call it dark, because there was so little characterization and almost no focus on any one event long enough to evoke moods or feelings at all. The cast are described, and the reader is told how they feel and how they act, but the writing does not evoke those things. It simply exists.
The book jumps from event to event, providing just enough detail to flesh that event out but never enough to connect them thematically or in terms of cause and effect. There is just enough detail to create a narrative, but not enough to push the reader to care about that narrative. It reads more like a summary of historical events than a novel, and for such a short book that just leaves me underwhelmed.
Now for some positives: the Prador are interesting. Asher spends more time going into their motivations and political structures than for his human characters, and that does provide at least some measure of motivation for the plot at hand.
Overall, there’s just not much to recommend about this. Other sci-fi novels, such as The Expanse have more body horror, politics, and more well defined characters. Novels like Armor show the brutality of war while still providing some form of connection to the characters. Myriad other authors have done the “violent first contact” novel, and frankly most have done better. This is at best popcorn fiction, but is missing the butter and salt that make the popcorn worth reading.
Prador Moon, and Asher’s work with the Polity universe in general, is oft talked about as a dark, violent sci-fi series with body horror. The violence is there, and to an extent there is some body horror, but this particular work is much more bland than expected.
Which is a shame, because if the expectation is something like Aliens but in novel form, this book did not deliver on that. The violence was intense but brief, and body horror just didn’t exist at all. It is even hard to call it dark, because there was so little characterization and almost no focus on any one event long enough to evoke moods or feelings at all. The cast are described, and the reader is told how they feel and how they act, but the writing does not evoke those things. It simply exists.
The book jumps from event to event, providing just enough detail to flesh that event out but never enough to connect them thematically or in terms of cause and effect. There is just enough detail to create a narrative, but not enough to push the reader to care about that narrative. It reads more like a summary of historical events than a novel, and for such a short book that just leaves me underwhelmed.
Now for some positives: the Prador are interesting. Asher spends more time going into their motivations and political structures than for his human characters, and that does provide at least some measure of motivation for the plot at hand.
Overall, there’s just not much to recommend about this. Other sci-fi novels, such as The Expanse have more body horror, politics, and more well defined characters. Novels like Armor show the brutality of war while still providing some form of connection to the characters. Myriad other authors have done the “violent first contact” novel, and frankly most have done better. This is at best popcorn fiction, but is missing the butter and salt that make the popcorn worth reading.