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Home > Categories > Books > Compilations > Lockdown Tales - What Comes After the Polity review

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Score: 9.8/10  [1 review]
5 out of 5
ProdID: 8786 - Lockdown Tales - What Comes After the Polity
Edited by Ian Whates

Lockdown Tales - What Comes After the Polity
Price:
£12.99
Sample/s Supplied by:
Click to search for all products supplied by Newcon Press

Disclosure StatementFULL DISCLOSURE: A number of units of this product have, at some time, been provided to KIWIreviews by Newcon Press or their agents for the sole purposes of unbiased, independent reviews. No fee was requested, offered nor accepted by KIWIreviews or the reviewers themselves - these are genuine, unpaid consumer reviews.
Available:
via online store

Lockdown Tales - What Comes After the Polity product reviews

Best-selling author Neal Asher was far from idle during the isolation of lockdown; he kept himself occupied in the best way possible: he wrote. And his imagination was clearly in overdrive. Five brand new novellas and novelettes and one novella reworked and expanded from a story first published in 2019. Together, they form Lockdown Tales, exploring the latter days of the Polity universe and beyond. What lies in wait for humanity after the Polity has gone?

Six stories, 150,000 words of fiction that crackle with energy, invention and excitement. Within their pages you will encounter prador, hoopers, sassy A.I.s, resurrected Golem, a mutated giant whelk that can ravage an island, hooders, megalomaniacs, war drones, Penny Royal, an intriguing sfnal take on High Planes Drifter and another with echoes of Robinson Crusoe... In fact, everything you might expect from concentrated Neal Asher and more.

    •  Lockdown Tales: An introduction
    •  The Relict
    •  Monitor Logan
    •  Bad Boy
    •  Plenty
    •  Dr. Whip
    •  Raising Moloch

Available as an A5 paperback and a numbered limited edition hardback signed by the author.

Check out Newcon Press onlineClick here to see all the listings for Newcon Press Visit their website They do not have a Twitter account Check them out on Facebook They do not have a YouTube Channel They do not have a Pinterest board They do not have an Instagram channel They do not have a TikTok channel



Tags:
drone   future   golem   hooper   lockdown   neal asher   penny royal   polity   prador   sci fi   spatterjay   war
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Product reviews...

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Click here to read the profile of tucker

Review by: tucker (Karl)
Dated: 1st of March, 2021

Link to this review Report this review

 

This Review: 9.8/10
Value for Money:
Score 9 out of 10
Variety / Theme:
Score 10 out of 10
Lose Track of Time:
Score 10 out of 10
Personal Choice:
Score 10 out of 10

15 years ago, while working for a regional newspaper, I was offered a chance to read and write a review of a book called "Brass Man" by an author I had never heard of. The book sat on my desk for almost a month before I got around to reading it - it sounded a bit outside my normal preferences. Getting into it took a fair bit of effort due to the extensive back-story I wasn't aware of, having not read any of the previous titles by Neal Asher. By the end of the book though, I was hooked. Asher crafted a world that I could see in my mind as I read, and that world had serious scope and depth. I started buying up his books wherever I could find them.

Fast forward to today, and I now have the task of reading a collection of short stories that are still set in Asher's "Polity" universe but addresses the timeline at the tail end of humanity's galaxy-spanning civilisation. Asher brings to bear his extensive writing prowess across a number of different modes that still resonate with his signature "hard-sci-fi threaded through a good storyline" style. From 'The Relict' - which follows a very strange man on an alien world in the midst of a protracted civil war - to 'Raising Moloch' - one of the few stories involving the dreaded Hooders wherein humans encounter one of the warbeasts and actually live to walk away. From start to finish, this collection will keep any fan of Asher's works hooked. If you have never read any of Asher's works, this is a great collection to give you a taste - if you like these stories, you're going to love the wider Polity universe and the myriad stories Asher draws from it.

One of the most compelling stories for me was 'Plenty' and at 102 pages, this is also the longest tale in the book. Very much a "shipwrecked, lost and alone" tale which, according to Neal, carries a very 'Robinson Crusoe' vibe that only became apparent in retrospect, however the first 35 pages reminded me far more of the Tom Hanks movie 'Cast Away' - ill of health yet still needing to harvest raw materials for survival from non-natural sources, in this case, the bio-tech 'podules' that have started to grow wild on this long-ago abandoned world.

The first tale in the book - 'The Relict' - is an excellent literary example of "Don't judge a book by its cover" with the main character being somewhat of an enigma to start with, but who soon blossoms into someone quite remarkable. The character development and revelations speed up as the story progresses, which kept me reading what amounted to a war story - not my favourite genre by any means. I don't come across many story-creators - be it books or movies - that can keep me engaged when the tale veers off to discuss war. Neal Asher is one of those rare few, which is good when one considered just how many of his stories are about warfare.

In a previous anthology - World War Four - is a tale called 'Monitor Logan', and there's a story in here of the same name. While they are the same story, the plot is drawn out into a much more interesting tale in three parts in this collection. Seeing the evolution of the story does make me wonder if Neal has plans to extend other shorts into fuller stories, and maybe even into full novels in their own right. I know there's a few of his short tales I would dearly love to read more of.

Overall, this is a stunning collection and I hope Neal writes many more like it. I'll be watching for them eagerly.

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