That’s right, it’s another farkin’ book review!

I started this book before the election, and between that and work it was slow getting started. This slow start was not because the book started slow though. I was hooked almost immediately actually, I just had no time.

Once my free time loosened up a bit, I dove into The Skinner with relish.

The setting is the mostly water-covered world of Splatterjay, founded by Jay Hoop, which was on the front lines of a war with the alien Prador about a thousand years ago. Then and now Splatterjay is also the home to a particulary virulent virus. The virus doesn’t kill, it changes. Humans infected with it slowly become stronger, heal faster and stop aging (or nearly so). Such infected humans are know as Hoopers.

Most of the local fauna is infected as well, and as a result things are pretty deadly on Spatterjay. Asher illustrates this outside of the main story line in the intros to the 20 chapters which illustrate the (vicious) cycle of the Spatterjay food chain.

Jay Hoop colluded with the Prador during the war, and among the hoopers are a those who were his prisoners and slaves at the time. Those survivors are known as the Old Captains. These guys are nearly unkillable, incredibly strong, and, as a result of figuring out how to maintain an interest in life for a millenium, pretty mellow all in all. Jay Hooper is still alive too, if one can call it that, and now know as The Skinner.

The plot revolves around the return to Splatterjay of one of The Skinner’s former lover, Rebecca Frist; Sable Keech, essentially a cop who has been hunting down The Skinner’s former lieutenants since the end of the Prador War, and dead for the last 700 years. Keech is a reification, his organic body maintained by some sophisticated chemistry and augmented by cybernetics; and the Prador themselves.

Asher unfolds the plot carefully and what starts out well-paced slowly builds into very fast-paced and difficult to put down. There are a few good twists to the plot here and there as well.

The characters are all at least interesting, and usually much more so. You care what happens to them, even the AIs (artificial intelligences). None of the characters are really deep, but neither are any of the major ones one dimensional.

In some ways the novel reminds me of Frank Herber’s Dune. Replace the spice with the virus, the Fremen with the Hoopers, the inhospitable climate of Arrakis with the vicious fauna of Spatterjay and you have some sort of aquatic analog of Dune with the tech of a hard scifi setting.

Although The Skinner is a hard scifi novel it doesn’t dwell much on technical details and physics which should make it more accessible to those who tend to eschew harder scifi because they don’t like these aspects of it.

I would recommend The Skinner to anyone who appreciates a fast-paced action novel in any setting.