Necesitaba cambiar un poco de género después de una pequeña sobredosis de fantasía, así que decidí que era el momento adecuado para ponerme con The Human de Neal Asher y terminar la trilogía de ciencia ficción que había dejado colgada hace algún tiempo.


Hay algunos atributos en las novelas de Neal Asher que son una apuesta segura. Tecnología extremadamente avanzada, IAs que dan mil vueltas a cualquier humano, razas alienígenas aterradoras… Y todo esto está presente en The Human, corregido y aumentado. Si conocéis algo de la obra anterior del autor, el enemigo al que se solía enfrentar la humanidad eran los Prador, una especie cruel y astuta, pero una amenaza que queda en agua de borrajas comparado con lo que se nos viene encima ahora. Parece que en cada nueva entrega el escritor aplica el lema de los juegos olímpicos (Citius, altius, fortius) en clave de ciencia ficción, más peligro, más acción, más conspiraciones. No negaré que es algo arquetípico en la space opera y la ciencia ficción militar, pero también es muy entretenido cuando lo que se busca es desconexión.

The Human es una novela larga e intrincada, con muy diversos puntos de vista pero hay que reconocer que la narración fluye de forma fluida a lo largo de todas las páginas. Me han gustado especialmente los momentos de crisis paranoicas, porque cuando hay que mezclar necesariamente distintas tecnologías y ADN de especies muy dispares el resultado siempre estará bajo sospecha.

La tecnología a la que se hace referencia en la novela es tan avanzada que resulta indistinguible de la magia, pero tiene cierta base científica en los estudios punteros de la física actual. Me gusta que se intente hacer creíble algo que forzosamente escapa a nuestra comprensión.

Me resulta menos atractiva la visión imperialista a la que parece abocados todos los gobiernos o asociaciones que hacen acto de presencia en el libro. Y también es cierto que muchos pasajes del libro son un constante enfrentamiento de tecnologías cada vez más destructivas solo para verse superadas por la siguiente ola de invenciones.

Salvando estos detalles, que entiendo perfectamente que a otros les supongan un obstáculo mayor de lo que han significado para mí, es una novela de acción perfectamente disfrutable.

An incredible, action-packed conclusion to the series. The amount of destruction and deaths that occurred took my by surprise. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised after reading The Owner Trilogy but it still floored me.

The amount of detail into the battles and technology involved to fight this war was incredible. Initially I really loved it but I found I got a bit bored of it in the middle as it just felt like one long tech blurb.

I loved reading about Orlandine and how she took over the battle prep. I found she had the most personality out of all the main characters as the reader could witness how she changed over the novel, how she started to justify all the death and damage she caused. Orlandine subtly changed and it wasn’t until the end that the reader started to realize it was more than just a natural progression.

Overall this was a good novel with intense battles, okay character development and tons of technical details. It was the weaker out of the three novels in the trilogy however as I found the middle dragged with too much battle and technology details.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan for the ARC.

This is book three of the Jain series. The book continues the fight of the first two books. I enjoyed the book.

Big themes examined in an action-packed rip through the Polity: power, corruption, self-destruction, sense of self, civic responsibility and an ever increasing scale of arms war. Neal Asher latest novel tracks the action through multiple locatoins on scales universal and personal, combining to face a threat to all known life.

The author, Neil Asher, created a universe built around Jain tech. Fortunately, I read The Soldier: Rise of the Jain, the first book in the Rise of the Jain series, otherwise, I wouldn’t have had the background needed to understand references made to former events and character enhanced abilities in The Human book. Even at that, the amount of detail that Asher goes into describing Jain tech was hard to follow in the first half of the book. With the technical background base built, the space opera story took off in the rest of the book.

The story is about Orlandine, a girl that I first encountered in “The Soldier”. In this book episode, she’s frantic to save her world against the takeover of a Jain tech invasion. In desperation, she gives in to the lure of greater power with the acceptance of her innate Jain tech capabilities and the power it provides when controlled by letting it grow within and about her. Becoming what she abhors ultimately helps her neutralize damage from the Jain tech invasion, but only at the cost of utilizing every resource on her planet and at the sequestration of the planet’s human residents and animal life. Fortunately for the planet and for Orlandine, an alien, known as the Client, whom Orlandine has allowed to exist unharassed in the solar system, intervenes by creating a virus that destroys Jain tech, reverses its effects, and ultimately results in freeing Orlandine from Jain tech’s dehumanizing entrapment.

At 576 pages, this was a long and tedious book to read. I don’t normally notice the length of a book with a good and engaging storyline; to be honest, I secretly don’t want such stories to end. But The Human was a struggle to read. While I like Neal Asher’s stories, I think he went overboard on the Jain tech background in this book.