Author: Neal Asher
Title: Dark Intelligence
Format: hardcover
Pages: 402
Series: Transformation #1
As weird as that may sound, Asher’s Polity books are my go-to comfort SF. Yes, they are filled to the brim with gore, lethal action, and body horror, and brazenly discussed issues such as free will, determinism, identity, and the origin of emotions, but they are also written (especially the newer ones) in a very accessible, quick and unobtrusive style, non-stop action, incredibly imaginative space battles and a general cinematic feel to the vast vistas of the void. Sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s the real deal.
Plus, let’s be honest here, this series boasts my favourite black AI Penny Royal as its protagonist. I just couldn’t pass this!
It’s by no means a standalone series. It’s a part of the Polity universe, and builds upon the foundations of the previous books, particularly The Technician and Prador Moon, and, to a lesser extent, The Shadow of the Scorpion. The enjoyment and understanding of the events of the Transformation series would be severely limited without reading these. Which, in turn, build upon Asher’s debut series, Agent Cormac (Gridlinked, The Line of Polity, Brass Man, Polity Agent, and Line War [aaaand I can’t believe I didn’t write a review for Line War. sigh]). So, I’ll state the obvious here: if you haven’t read the aforementioned novels, they constitute a huge time investment. Plus, Asher’s early books, mainly Gridlinked, do suffer from the lack of writing experience: they are somewhat clunky and undeveloped, with the main emphasis put on action. I love this type of gritty SF, with military undertones, inimical powerful alien races and their artefacts, and human – and AI hubris at the center of it all. But that’s me ;).
This time around, we get to see some new parts of the galaxy, beyond the borders of the Polity, and we even get a peek into the Prador Kingdom. There are new intriguing worlds out there, black holes, interesting societies, fascinating plots, betrayals and attempts at redemption. As the name of the series suggests, the main focus of these novels is transformation: physical, mental, and emotional. What Asher achieves in this regard is truly fabulous; and while most of it resides firmly in the softer end of the genre’s continuum, being technically as vague and incomprehensible as magic, it all was sciency enough for me to remain completely immersed.
Asher seemingly does take some shortcuts in this first Transformation installment: from the get-go we get an uber-manly hero as our main character, his manliness underscored by a rather preposterous name of Thorvald Spear (who names his ship Lance – a bit too on-the-nose Freudian, perhaps?). At the beginning, Spear is exactly what we expect him to be: handsome, highly intelligent, very skilled, competent, calm and composed, and very, very rich. Another iteration of James Bond or Jack Ryan, this time in space. But Asher has a few aces up his sleeve this time around. Spear, for all his impenetrable armour of apparent privilege and intellect, is a victim. And while we travel with him on his mad quest for revenge, we start to realize something more: he is, in fact, a construct, a puppet with strings manipulated by the very entity he hates. He has been constructed with a very concrete purpose in mind. Will he accede to that purpose, will he let it define him? Or will he try to fight these constraints, these external drivers of his behaviour? But this goes further than Spear’s dilemma: it applies also to us. How much is predestined in what we do by the limitations of our cognition, the material wiring of our brains, the pressure of the environment? Do we even have a say in all this, do we possess some vestige of free will?
And here we come to the crux of this novel and the entire series. What defines our identity? How the material substrate, of the mind, of the body, determines our mental and emotional state, our sense of self? While the answers that Asher offers here might be considered controversial in their trademark decisiveness stemming from an assumption that there’s one true answer, and ultimately prove somewhat simplistic, they are definitely, rewardingly thought-provoking. Yeah, Asher smashed it out of the park this time. Man, Penny Royal is a masterful creation. This AI with deliciously dark history is incredibly creepy, with a twisted sense of humour powered by near-omnipotence and near-omniscience, and with a serious multiple personality disorder (which, in the end, sounds like a bit of a cop-out, a contrived simplification of reality, but then, we’re talking about a popular culture artefact here, so I guess Asher can be forgiven ;)). Penny Royal gets a royal treatment here, complete with flashbacks and some long-needed explanations. I love how Asher portrays his AIs as beings which are fallible, deeply imperfect, and yet still leagues above us, humans – high enough to be viewed as gods by some.
As you can already surmise, I enjoyed the heck out of Dark Intelligence. I loved meeting some old friends (or nemeses) again, such as the Amistad, the war drone, Earth AI, the Atheter gabbleduck, and of course, Penny Royal. The cast of new characters is pretty impressive, too, and Asher definitely upped his game when it comes to character creation and development. I particularly liked the addition of Prador characters, Sverl and his family are a delight to read about. And the action scenes are absolutely fantastic, as usual.
I went on and gobbled up the next two installments in a blink. Comfort read, as I said ;).
Score: 8.5/10
Re-enchantment Of The World 
Yeah, this had to be some of his best written stuff.
The only thing that gets me is Asher’s refusal to place his book in neat chronological order. It took me forever to realize that this trilogy took place before some of the others.
I was going to ask how long before you read the rest of the trilogy but you neatly answered that already.
It’s good to see Asher on the radar again.
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Yeah, this trilogy is really great. Never would have expected Asher to become subversive, but here he is (to an extent, obviously, the manly man and his supportive woman flying of into the sunset remains a staple 😉).
But I love Asher’s take on how our perception is the result of confluence of so many factors, how we are shaped by our memories and our definitions of self, and how it all is to a large extent dependent on the physical world: our bodies, our environment etc.
This trilogy is certainly among his more philosophical works, full of social commentary, too. I enjoyed the heck out of it! 😁
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I always appreciate both of you raving about this series. The sheer number of books in this series is kind of off-putting for me. Are there any standalone books by Asher that either of you would recommend?
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You can try his short story, The Parasite to get a feel for his earlier stuff.
He also has the standalone Cowl. That one is a bit weird though, and that’s saying something.
He also has a trilogy called the Owner trilogy that’s pretty standalone…
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Thanks mate, I appreciate that 👍
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Just to add to what Bookstooge wrote, there is also a collection of short stories set in Polity universe: “The Gabble and Other Stories” 🙂
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Thanks Ola!
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👍 cheers mate! Everything to get you to to give Asher a try! 😁
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Wow! Your review made me want to drop the books I am currently reading and go back to this series (and I am enjoying the books I am reading at the moment, so it’s something!). I have only read the first book, but I want to continue the series, it is just the same “so many books, so little time” thibg that is the core of bookworm’s lives! But maybe bow it won’t be lobg before I’ll go back to these series!
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I’m very happy to read this, even if I’m just adding thousands of pages to your TBR! 😁
I love Asher’s world and feel that his Polity universe should be more widely known – so I’m extremely happy when I see my efforts at spreading this love bring results! I hope you’ll have a blast with this series, Susy ☺️
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Every time I encounter one of your Asher reviews (or one from Bookstooge as well), I question the wisdom of giving up on this author after my not-so-great experience with Gridlinked, which ended up as a DNF. Since I was advised to try the Spatterjay series as a better introduction, I might challenge myself with that one, now that SF Month is rapidly approaching…. 🙂
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To be fair, Gridlinked is the weakest of his books IMO. The language is rather clunky, there is a lot of technobabble, some strange mysterious beings that play a larger role only later in the series, and Cormac is somewhat of a male Mary Sue with emotional deficiencies (so essentially James Bond :P). If you’re not drawn into the world itself it’s not an easy book to like. I’d recommend giving Asher another chance, and maybe Spatterjay is a better place to start (haven’t read it yet, Penny Royal was a much bigger draw for me 😂😂😂)
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Nothing wrong with good old entertaining space opera! But my TBR list is soo big already….
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Oh, I do love me some great space opera, particularly when AIs are done well and it gives some food for thought in addition to all the action! 😀
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Still need to read Asher. You always make such a good case for him. One day!
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I second this comment. 👍
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Thanks, Wakizashi! 😀
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I’m pretty sure Asher can be read superficially as a masculine form of high-octane milSF with a dash of body horror; but if you’re willing to go with the flow of this style and look beneath the surface at the philosophy and epistemology that build the foundation of his work it’s where he makes things really interesting! 😀 Spoiler alert: he’s not a total determinist, but he’s definitely far from a free will absolutist; particularly in this series he’s more focused on what makes sentient beings sentient and self-aware.
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Thanks for the elaboration! On that final matter, I´m reading 2019´s The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul: Learning and the Origins of Consciousness by Eva Jablonka and Simona Ginsburg atm, really a stunning book, 10 years in the making. So far complements the brilliant Contingency and Convergence: Toward a Cosmic Biology of Body and Mind by Russell Powell from 2020 very well.
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I’ll be looking forward to your review! Contingency… is on my TBR but life’s so busy right now I totally don’t have time for serious slow-reading non-fiction. Next year, hopefully!
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I hope the busy is positive busy, and not a negative one!
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Yeah, very much positive! I’ll probably write a post about it at some point, but I’ve finally made the plunge and decided to change my career path, and am now in the middle of a coding/programming bootcamp 😀 so I’ll be scarce on WP at least till January 😉
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I’m curious about it because of that AI.
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Yep, the AI is one of a kind! 😀
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Nice to hear that this complex universe is now comfort reads for you, Ola! I have Gridlinked waiting for me to pick it up and I look forward to it more than ever with each new review of a book in that universe from you hahah Thanks for sharing! 😀
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I do hope you’ll enjoy it, Lashaan! 😀
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