Comparing Ian Cormac, the protagonist of this SF adventure, to a futuristic James Bond would be fair. Even the author himself does so. "Gridlinked" is an action-packed tale from the future filled with dragon creatures, lizard men and powerful androids. Lots of gratuitous violence, a little gratuitous sex and an overall fun romp through the speculative fiction genre.
Arian Pelter is a separatist madman who augments his mind with not one, but two network implants or augmentations. Throughout the rest of the novel, Pelters brain is awash in competing streams of data. It drives him further from sanity and the strain manifests itself in physical defects. Reading Neal Ashers GRIDLINKED, I felt like my mind was similarly overloaded and torn apart. Filled with swirling cameos from homicidal golem-androids, babbling intergalactic dragons, malfunctioning teleporters, an ineffective AI government, animal-like cosmetic alterations, an immortal guardian, a self-praised James Bond protagonist, and too many references to Edward Lear poetry, GRIDLINKED was a headache!
While I enjoyed the book in small doses, GRIDLINKED neither came together into a carefully-developed world nor a well-designed novel. The main character was advised early in the book to permanently disable his augmentation so that he could be free of the grid link and be human once again. I recommend the same. Disconnect from this book!
While I enjoyed the book in small doses, GRIDLINKED neither came together into a carefully-developed world nor a well-designed novel. The main character was advised early in the book to permanently disable his augmentation so that he could be free of the grid link and be human once again. I recommend the same. Disconnect from this book!
interesting and fast paced. only downside was the ambiguous ending, and also that there were two completely different story lines going on that could each have stood alone as a separate novel.
