The Departure [Hardcover]

Welcome to a future where a lot of things have gone wrong. Democracy is a thing of the past. The bureaucracies of the world have taken over. The Commission sounds suspiciously close to the European Commission which I guess is not something Neal Asher is fond of. The environment is unpleasant and overpopulation needs a final solution. At least that's what the people in power seem to be planning. Rebellion is hard since the Commission controls orbital laser weapons that can destroy any riot in seconds. They also dispatch robots troops straight out of the war of the worlds to pick up any ringleaders for torture and brainwashing.

It is a chilling world where people are classified after their usefulness to society. Zero-assets are more or less dumped to fetch for themselves. Usefulness is of course assigned by The Commission.

This is the world where this electrifying story takes place. Saul is a man with extraordinary skills and intellect but who can't remember what the things you put on your feet and walk in are. He wakes up in a box on the verge of incineration but escape bent on revenge. We get to follow his trail through what is left of Europe and Russia as he learns the world again. In a way this reminded me of a story by A. E. Van Vogt named Tyranpolis (aka Future Glitter from 1973) where the hero instead has a scientific breakthrough in an all-seeing kind of technology while Saul here goes for the AI interfaced brain that Neal seems so fond of (See Gridlinked).

The Yin of the story is a woman called Var who probably is Saul's lost sister. She struggles at the abandoned colony on Mars where the political officer is trying to kill off all none essential people to make the resources last longer. Her story and Paul's take turns in a way that fits well with the story and keep the reader interested.

There is a lot of good action down on earth and up at an orbital fortress but you never feel that the ending is in any doubt which is a bit sad in an otherwise excellent story. I can live with that and still enjoy the story but I have a high tolerance for characters like that.

The Departure is a good first novel in the Owner trilogy and the significance of that name for the series intrigues me. I want to know what happens next. I don't think The Departure is for everyone but it is a good standard fare science fiction with a bit of social critique and a lot of action.

The next book in the series Zero Point will be out next year probably around the same time as this one.

I've read nearly everything in the Asher catalog from the blazing guns and gore of The Skinner (along with the proceeding Voyage and Orbus), the shoot'em up fiesta of Gridlinked (along with the proceeding four Cormac novels) and the razzle-dazzle action of Prador Moon (and the other Polity novels and stories) - all totally twelve books. The Departure is my unlucky thirteenth book by Asher. This is NOT a prequel to the Polity universe but it does share some of the same technology.

Asher does one thing and he does it well - action. He's done it again and again and again and again. He's become a one-trick pony IMHO. It's the ONLY thing he does now: guns and guts in space, guns and guts on Spatterjay, guns and guts in orbitals, guns and guts everywhere else. The Departure is everything BUT that... now we guns and guts on EARTH! How's that for a change!

After the year 2120 there are 18 billions people on the earth, thousands more in orbit and 163 colonists on Mars. The formation of an authoritative world government has the people's freedom suppressed, the appetites unsated and their anger piqued. Using 90% of the planet's revenue simply to maintain the global dictatorship, the availability of food, power, water and even space is severely limited, except for those who hold the seats of power or are deemed to be a Societal Asset. Everyone else is declared as "Zero Asset" and are largely ignored, gunned down, gassed or trampled by mobs, looters or stampedes.

The Departure has a fantastic beginning. The first hundred pages felt like Asher was going in a new direction, something along the dystopia lines of mystery/noir akin to Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon): a lone man (Alan Saul) infiltrates government compounds, assuming the identities of VIPs, murdering key staff and uncovering secrets all the while attempting to become closer to his one-time torturer- Smith. With his memory largely destroyed by the torture process, his escape remains a mystery to him but some things slowly come to light as his equally as mysterious internal AI outlines his life before and after the escape two years prior. Occasionally shifting scene to Mars, a rebel uncovers a message from Earth announcing that no Mars missions will be made to relieve the staff and they must live on their own for the next 20 years, even though a 5-year expectation would have slim chances of survival. Marshalling forces, colonists and scientist Var launches attacks on the Earth-sanctioned government and their lackeys.

Eventually, the original plot lapses into all too familiar territory as the body count begins to escalate, the weapons become more profuse through the pages and the string of coincidences becomes a tad bit too ridiculous. If you thought the gridlinked Cormac had number-crunching power to hack systems, just WAIT to you read all the fanciful things Alan Saul can do. If you thought the offal peeling off the walls in Orbus was gory, just you WAIT for all the zero-gravity brain splatters, oozing shotgun-created orifices, decapitating headshots... the list seems to never end, ad nauseum. Throw in a cast of one-dimensional characters and *poof* you have yourself the most over-the-top Asher novel ever produced! The extent of characterization of Alan Saul can be summed up in one or two lines: he was a genius, he had a girlfriend, he has a sisters and now his hobbies include dismemberment, impaling and vindictiveness.

It's all WAY over the top. Nearly every page features a gun of some sort or a corpse (usually the prior resulting in the latter). The most notable scenes include shooting a woman point-blank in the face and bowel-releasing corpses lining the space station. By Saul's hand alone, the body count must reach something along the lines of 500. Add in the rest of the bodies which seems to explode, decompose, fester, whither or ignite in his presence, then the total is scores of millions. Over the top? Oh, quite so!

The radical future earth is kind of interesting but is largely overshadowed by the continual killings. I mean, I expect that sort of thing from an Asher novel but it seems like he's not going to grow as an author and produce anything intellectually substantial, like spin-the-wheel-and-choose any Iain Banks novel. The dystopia in the 498 pages just doesn't engage the reader the least bit- it's just a maniacal killing spree on par with a Rambo movie. A terrible attempt.

I've read all the Polity books happily, so I ordered Departure from the UK since it was released earlier. Had several others in the reading pile, and I carefully positioned this one in the pile to provide a midcourse lift. My mistake.

The first 100 or so pages were interesting; new society, mysterious skills, talkative (if colorless) AI, nice lady. Looking good, but then it turned out that the part I liked was simply the setup for a long (very long, interminably long) battle. And the second Point of View was another battle, but one that was even less interesting, so that I resented the interruptions every time we cut to the 2nd POV. Both battles were monotonous, fought by cardboard characters, with the variety resulting from
the villains being recycled cardboard. The outcomes of the battles were predictable, as was the book as a whole.

I hope Mr. Asher returns to form with his next book, although this one may provide a shaky foundation.

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