The Skinner by Neil Asher

"Welcome to Spatterjay... where sudden death is the normal way of life."

I'm continuing to explore new authors, and next in line was Neil Asher with The Skinner. First reaction to the world he's created is not hugely original - we have The Polity (poor man's Culture), we have AIs running it (poor man's Minds), we have Spatterjay (poor man's Deathworld)... But the second reaction is that it doesn't actually matter. Characters and stories behind them are interesting enough, and plot holds in place very well. It's funny - it's the second book I've read in a row about immortality: in Altered Carbon it was about immortal minds while bodies were dying, and in The Skinner we have immortal bodies while the minds die. Both books explore the concept of what happens to a human when they live longer than their natural lifespan would allow - in Altered Carbon they go more or less mad, in The Skinner they either adapt and find peace or die.

There are three main characters who each come to the planet Spatterjay with their separate missions. Erlin is an immortal scientist who is coming back to seek an old lover, Janer is a man working for a hive mind taking care of business for them, and Keech is - what I can only describe as - an Egyptian mummy, a 700 year old walking corpse on a 700 year old vendetta. And Spatterjay is extremely hostile planet where life is based on the spatterjay virus making all inhabitants immortal and nearly indestructible.

There were some things I didn't care too much in this book - main issue was probably the very jumpy plot. Obviously the purpose of the narrative was to keep the reader on their toes - but because there were quite a few sub-plots going on at the same time, jumping between them every couple of pages was at times quite painful. I even did something I never normally do - skim reading some bits because I wanted to get to the bit of the story that I really liked. And that's of course what kept me going - the plot was good, it was well written, it was interesting and I did really care what happened to the characters.

So Neil Asher might not be right on the top of my list of authors, but I believe I will come back to his books sooner rather than later.