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The Skinner

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The Skinner

By: Neal Asher
Narrated by: William Gaminara
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Summary

Set in a lethal waterworld where sudden death is a way of life, The Skinner is the first novel in the far-future Spatterjay series by Neal Asher.

The savage ocean planet of Spatterjay draws visitors with very different agendas. Erlin is immortal and seeks a reason to keep living. Janer hosts a hive mind, which paid him to find this planet. And Keech is an agent of Earth who’s been dead for seven hundred years – but still hunts a notorious criminal.

On Spatterjay’s vast waterscapes, only the Old Captains risk the native life forms and their voracious appetites. However, they are now barely human. And somewhere out there Keech’s target – the Skinner – runs wild. Keech pursues the Skinner for atrocities committed in a centuries-past war, fought with the alien Prador. But one of these Prador is fast approaching Spatterjay to exterminate witnesses to his own war crimes. And he won’t spare its visitors.

Continue the science fiction adventure with The Voyage of Sable Keech and Orbus.

 Adventure Cyberpunk Fiction Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera Fantasy Thought-Provoking
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Critic reviews

His easy style and intriguing plot make for a great story that treats the reader as an adult (The Times)
Crammed full of inventive technology, organic and artificial intelligence, horrible monsters, and a thick mesh of story lines (SFX)
An exhilarating tour through one of the most ingeniously, elaborately deadly worlds since Harry Harrison invented Death World (Locus)
Hurtles along at a high-octane clip . . . In sum: a blast (Kirkus)
All stars
Most relevant
The most noticeable fault with this audiobook is that the cut between scenes are seamless, which makes it quite confusing. In the printed book I guess it is visually obvious when we enter a new scene, one second of silence would have done it for this audiobook. But the words are just flowing in a long stream broken into a few chapters, while the scene cuts can be counted in hundreds.
Apart from that the narrative is good, William Gaminara manages to make an entertaining difference between all of the characters in the book.
Neal Ashers story is well written, loaded with sensations and quite thrilling. But that's about all it is, I finished it two days ago and I have already forgotten the names of more than half of the characters. The name that will probably stick longest is "Sniper", which isn't even a person but a war drone. I guess that says it all about personality development throughout the book.

Teenager SF

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A fantastic story that I'd read before, I'm extremely impressed by the narrator's performance, highly recommended!

Brilliant performance

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Brilliant story with interesting characters and a brilliant narration. The switch between character viewpoints can be jarring they're so quick, but it's only a small issue when compared to the superb narration.

Riveting hard scifi

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I found The Skinner to be very addictive and thrilling after about a quarter into the book, however it was difficult to get an idea and control of all the characters involved.

exiting but complex

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Any additional comments?

This a terrific story, well read. The world is distinctive and original. Can't wait to read the rest of the Spatterjay books.

The characters of Sniper, Ketch and the vile Frisk are superbly drawn. And it's a joy to read a high-tech drone battle that is both creative and yet seems to make visual sense.

One nitpick.
Would the producers of the audio please please please please make the pauses between scenes longer than the pauses between normal sentences! It is SO confusing – especially in a book that has cross-cut scenes with three different ships – to run the sentences on. It often takes about a paragraph to realise that the new text is not a continuation of the previous scene.

It is the norm on all audio books, so I can't understand why it was not done on this title.

Thanks.

Great book. Great narrator. Needs pauses...

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