Meanwhile Mika, scientist and Dragon expert, is again kidnapped by that unfathomable alien entity and dragged into the heart of things: to wake. Mr Crane, the indefatigable brass killing machine sets out for vengeance, while Orlandine, a vastly-augmented haiman who herself controls Jain technology, seeks a weapon of appalling power and finds allies from an ancient war. Further attacks and seemingly indiscriminate slaughter ensue, but only serve to bring some of the most dangerous individuals in the Polity into the war. and beginning to question the motives of his AI masters.
When one of Erebus's wormships kills millions on the world of Klurhammon, a high-tech agricultural world of no real tactical significance, agent Ian Cormac is sent to investigate, though he is secretly struggling to control a new ability no human being should possess. Though occasionally unpleasant (the author appears to have a thing about parasites) and often violent, these well-crafted tales provide plenty of high-concept scientific extrapolation.The Polity is under attack from a 'melded' AI entity with control of the lethal Jain technology, yet the attack seems to have no coherence. "The Thrake" concerns the fate of a Christian pseudoscientist who makes a near-fatal mistake while looking for signs of religious belief in the aliens he's studying.
"Proctors" and "The Owner" are part of a series in which human beings must come to terms with the universe being ruled by an inscrutable, virtually immortal alien with godlike powers. The gruesome "Spatterjay" is set on an alien world whose human colonists have been radically modified and made virtually indestructible, by the enormously hostile environment. The alien it contains turns out to be the last of a long-extinct race of genetic engineers with terrifying capabilities. In "The Engineer," an interstellar research vessel picks up an escape pod that has been drifting for millions of years. ) is rapidly becoming one of the major figures in 21st-century SF, as shown by the 10 powerful and entertaining stories in this collection.
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