Part of Neal Asher’s Polity future history (Gridlinked
What should have been a relatively simple assignment policing Hagren while its society is rebuilt and civic order restored becomes much more when treason is discovered amongst Cormac’s squad mates, and Cormac is chosen by his superiors for a hazardous mission to infiltrate a local separatist cell. This sets Cormac on a dangerous journey across the devastated former battlefields of the Prador War, pursuing humans as lethal and pitiless as the Prador themselves.
Interspersed throughout this story, Shadow of the Scorpion also tells of Cormac’s youth in the dark days of the war, and of the mysterious scorpion-shaped AI war drone that haunted his childhood- and that has seemingly reappeared.
I really liked this book. It provides plenty of the intense action Asher is known for, and continues to explore the setting of Asher’s future history. On a purely action/adventure level, the book definitely delivers, with Asher’s usual talent for excitement, description, and visceral power brought to the forefront. It also gave me what were probably the two things I most wanted from Asher: more information about the character Ian Cormac, and a closer look at the society of the Polity itself.
Most of the Polity universe books are set primarily on worlds outside the Polity, or on the Polity’s frontier, or on worlds suffering some crisis, and are shown mostly from the perspective of Earth Central Security personnel or people outside normal society. The flashback portions of The Shadow of the Scorpion gives us a nice look at Polity’s society on Earth itself, as experienced by average people. I love the world-building aspect of science fiction, so I enjoyed this a lot.
An important part of the flashbacks revolves around technology to edit or erase your own memories, sought by Cormac’s shell-shocked older brother after returning from a tour of duty as a field medic on the front lines of the Prador War. Quite plausibly, this is a much-sought service during the war, common enough to support the existence of large clinics dedicated to it, and Asher explores it well. The book chillingly juxtaposes the psychological devastation of war and the grotesque physical injuries wrought by Prador military technology, with the Polity’s enormously advanced medical science seeking to reassemble shattered minds with same casual efficiency with which it repairs broken bodies.
While there is still plenty of action, this is a more character-based story than is typical for Asher, and fortunately I think the characterization here is stronger than what I’ve seen from him previously. The portrayal of a newly recruited Ian Cormac several decades younger than the one we first met in Gridlinked is well done- Cormac is still recognizably Cormac, but he displays a previously unseen degree of emotional vulnerability befitting a man who has not yet become desensitized by decades of violence and horror.
The flashback sequences from Cormac’s childhood are also well-done. Asher’s portrayal of the young Cormac, a bright, introverted, precociously serious-minded child, rang very true to me. (There’s a brief line suggesting that Cormac has been diagnosed with mild autistic tendencies, and while it’s not the focus of the story, I think Asher’s portrayal is one of the more insightful and understanding fictional portraits of it that I’ve seen.)
The flashback scenes about Cormac’s older brother’s return from the war are also effective, and do a good job of portraying something often unexplored in stories of soldiers returning home. Mixed with the happiness of seeing your loved one safely home, there is the tension and awkwardness of reuniting with someone you care about who has been profoundly changed, the trepidation of wanting to reach out and reconnect with someone deeply marked by experiences you can never truly understand and not really knowing how. The portrayal of this is fairly subtle, yet to me unmistakable and quite poignant.
Shadow of the Scorpion
