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The Voyage of the Sable Keech | 
| Author: Neal Asher
Publisher: Tor
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy New: £5.99
You Save: £2.00 (25%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 14711
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 584
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7 x 4.4 x 1.5
ISBN: 0330411608
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780330411608
ASIN: 0330411608
Publication Date: October 6, 2006
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Fun, but not gripping December 4, 2008
This is not a bad book, but it is not an especially good one either. Asher has written some outstanding stuff, but I'm afraid that The Voyage just doesn't stand up to The Skinner or Gridlinked.
By placing the action in the same setting with the same characters, the book comes off as a bit tee. The eponymous Sable Keech has easily enough character to act as the principle in another work, but it would need to be away from Splatterjay to avoid retreading old ground.
Asher shows some real flare when he writes of Sniper, but allot of the action with the Hoopers was just too familiar to be really gripping.
It is the curse of a great author to be held to extremely demanding standards, but at the end of the day it would be another of his books that I would recommend to a friend, or to you.
 Asher on top form again! March 27, 2008
I first read Voyage of the Sable Keech before I read The Skinner, and while it was great, a few things didn't quite make sense. I laid my hands on a copy of The Skinner and loved that too, and just had to read Voyage again. It is even better second time round, now that I understand everything going on. It is a blast, action all the way, something I desperately needed after reading Iain M Banks dreary sleep inducing latest effort, Matter.
If it is action you want you won't be disappointed with Voyage of the Sable Keech, or indeed any of Asher's other works.
A vibrant 5 star experience October 5, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Both a well written book and excellent sf, it is set in the far future on the planet of Spatterjay, which is described in unusually rich and entertaining detail. As a true master storyteller the author draws us effortlessly into his complex world replete with a plethora of original ideas.
Perhaps its greatest merit is that it remains so highly entertaining throughout, in spite of being above average length, with a surprisingly large number of likable characters (my favourite being an AI drone - an idea Asher thanks I.M.Banks for).
This is my first Asher book but definitely not my last.
Another great book from Neal Asher February 16, 2007
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
Following on from The Skinner and an off-shoot of Asher's 'Ian Cormac/Polity' series we are returned to the world of Spatterjay, where life on the planet is insanely vicious due to the regenerative effects of a common virus which gives those infected a massively increased resistance to pain and damage.
The Sable Keech of the title is a boat built for 'Reifications'. These 'Reifs' are people who have been killed but their bodies and minds held together by technology. The name of the boat refers to the only reification who ever successfully 'rose from the dead' through a combination of the Spatterjay virus and nanotechnology and whose re-animation has inspired a cult to follow in his footsteps.
Nothing is quite as it seems however: the WindCatchers getting 'auged' and waking up to the possibilities of their world, the re-appearance of a Prador adult, the robot drone Sniper getting his new (and fully militarised) drone body after 10 years as the planets AI warden and a coup amongst the Reifs and, of course the normal everyday issues of trying to survive on a planet where pretty much everything is lethal.
Neal Asher is one of the few British sci-fi writers that can be mentioned in the same name as Iain M Banks. He has a fluid writing style with a great sense of plot timing that makes for a gripping and exciting story set in an entirely believable possible future. If I have any issues with this book, it's the authors tendency to rely a little too much on the lifeforms of Spatterjay and other Polity planets at the expense of the developments of the main characters but that is really a minor gripe compared to the excellence of the book.
You will enjoy this book more if you have read the previous book [...], but this book is certainly good enough to stand on it's own. A definite 5 stars.
 a sequel to an original July 16, 2006
3 out of 13 found this review helpful
I loved the skinner. It lived with me long afterwards. It was both beguiling and extraordinarily different. So why a sequel? That pretty much tells the same story as before - beating the prador menace? No idea. As much as I loved returning to this incredible world I'd rather have been taken somewhere else.
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