Shadow of the Scorpion cover art

Shadow of the Scorpion

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Shadow of the Scorpion

By: Neal Asher
Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
Try Standard free

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £12.20

Buy Now for £12.20

About this listen

Shadow of the Scorpion is a standalone prequel to Neal Asher’s explosive Agent Cormac series.

Some secrets are too hard to bear . . .

Following the human vs prador war, Ian Cormac signs up with Earth Central Security. He’s sent out to restore order on worlds devastated by alien bombardment. But he learns humanity can be far more dangerous – even those closest to him.

Amidst the tragic ruins left by wartime atrocities, Cormac discovers in himself the cold capacity for violence. It’s a quality that’ll make him one of Earth’s top agents. Haunted by childhood memories of a sinister scorpion-shaped war drone, and the burden of losses he doesn’t remember, he’ll discover some hard truths. These will set him on a course of vengeance, where he’ll have to use all his hard-won skills just to stay alive.

 Adventure Anthologies & Short Stories Cyberpunk Fiction Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera War

Continue the series
The Engineer ReConditioned cover art
The Engineer ReConditioned By: Neal Asher

Critic reviews

The Shadow of the Scorpion skillfully combines graphic action and sensitive characterisation and is Asher's most accomplished novel to date.
A powerhouse cocktail of lurid violence, evocative world-building and typically grotesque monsters, but it’s amazing how much emotion he’s also layered into what could have been a simplistic SF potboiler. Asking difficult questions while still delivering plenty of full-tilt adventure and widescreen action, this is top-notch stuff from an author well and truly at the top of his game.
Ian Cormac is, it seems, here to stay in the collective consciousness of sci-fi literature… Thoroughly enjoyable stuff.
An insane, sexy war story full of giant explosions on alien worlds. It's also a well-plotted exploration of the way violence destroys everything, even memory.
The novel manages to raise some interesting points about what it means to be human in a society where the lines between man and machine have blurred: robots are capable of emulating emotions and humans may be technologically augmented and live indefinitely. When it is possible to have traumatic memories erased from the human brain, the novel questions the wisdom of doing so and suggests that memories and pain shape our psyche.
All stars
Most relevant
The beginning of Ian Cormack’s story. I won’t give any spoilers, but this is as good as it gets for a prequel. Peter Nobel’s narration is spot on, as usual.

Surprisingly moving

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I would like to start by saying my previous listen with this narrator was negative and I was not going to purchase more books he narrates but I was keen to hear this book, the narrator has improved dramatically! As for the actual book, I am really enjoying my Neal Asher binge at present and look forward to my next listen as I’m invested in the Polity universe Neal has created

A great introduction to Agent Cormac

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
really enjoyed this and its been many years since I read the book, glad I bought the audible book.

Great book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A good story that jumps around a bit, especially in the last few chapters, where it flip-flops between the past and present of the main character.

I'm not going to go into the story at all, as it is too easy to drop spoilers, but I will say that the characters are believable (mostly), and I found it easy to engage with the overall scenario presented.

As for the Performance:
I don't know how it happened, but someone reigned-in Ric Jerrom's over-enthusiastic 'bedtime-story narration' style.
A massive improvement over what he did to "Prador Moon."

I've bought the next in this sequence already and am really looking forward to it.

A much better reading of a good book!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
recommend by a friend who has never failed to give me a bad book recommendation. hard sci fi story which merges AI, aliens and cool characters

excellent and immersive

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews