War Factory
Transformations Book Two
-
-
4.4 • 27 Ratings
-
-
- $16.99
Publisher Description
Thorvald Spear, resurrected from his death over a hundred years earlier, continues to hunt Penny Royal, the rogue AI and dangerous war criminal on the run from Polity forces. Beyond the Graveyard, a lawless and deadly area in deep space, Spear follows the trail of several enemy Prador, the crab-like alien species with a violent history of conflict with humanity.
Sverl, a Prador genetically modified by Penny Royal and slowly becoming human, pursues Cvorn, a Prador harboring deep hatred for the Polity looking to use him and other hybrids to reignite the dormant war with mankind.
Blite, captain of a bounty hunting ship, hands over two prisoners and valuable memplants from Penny Royal to the Brockle, a dangerous forensics entity under strict confinement on a Polity spaceship that quickly takes a keen interest in the corrupted AI and its unclear motives.
Penny Royal meanwhile continues to pull all the strings in the background, keeping the Polity at bay and seizing control of an attack ship. It seeks Factory Station Room 101, a wartime manufacturing space station believed to be destroyed. What does it want with the factory? And will Spear find the rogue AI before it gets there?
War Factory, the second book in the Transformation trilogy, is signature space opera from Neal Asher: breakneck pacing, high-tech science, bizarre alien creatures, and gritty, dangerous far-future worlds.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Asher's complex second Transformation near-future space opera (after Dark Intelligence) follows the Machiavellian plans of a dark AI called Penny Royal as she tries (or appears to try) to avert war between the Polity, consisting of humans and AIs, and the Kingdom, made up of crab-like aliens called prador. The prador Cvorn is appalled by the changes that his father-captain Sverl is undergoing changes initiated by Penny Royal and seeks to use those abominations as the basis for renewed hostilities with the Polity. Sverl is willing to battle Cvorn to protect those humans that he now feels are under his care. The humans Thorvald Spear, Captain Blite, and Trent Sobel are caught within the intricacies of Penny Royal's plans and no longer certain that they will survive. Another AI, the Brockle, has become fascinated with Penny Royal, as both of them have violated standard human morality and been made to suffer the consequences. In addition to preventing the coming war, Penny Royal's plans also require her to return to her place of origin, Factory Station Room 101. Asher ventures into some terrifying minds and incredible space battles in this tangled but heart-pounding sequel, which achieves a rare success in depicting truly nonhuman forms of intelligence.
