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Shadow of the Scorpion

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Shadow of the Scorpion

By: Neal Asher
Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
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About this listen

Ian Cormac was raised to adulthood during the end of the war between the human Polity and the vicious arthropoid race the Prador.

In Neal Asher's Shadow of the Scorpion, Cormac is haunted by childhood memories of a sinister scorpion-shaped war drone and the burden of losses he doesn't remember.

In the years following the war, he signs up with Earth Central Security and is sent out to help either restore or simply maintain order on worlds devastated by Prador bombardment.

There he discovers that though the old enemy remains as murderous as ever, it is not anywhere near as perfidious or dangerous as some of his fellow humans, some of them closer to him than he would like.

Amidst the ruins left by wartime genocides, he discovers in himself a cold capacity for violence, learns some horrible truths about his own past and, set upon a course of vengeance, tries merely to stay alive.

©2017 Neal Asher (P)2017 Macmillan Digital Audio Adventure Anthologies & Short Stories Cyberpunk Fiction Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera War

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All stars
Most relevant  
recommend by a friend who has never failed to give me a bad book recommendation. hard sci fi story which merges AI, aliens and cool characters

excellent and immersive

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The beginning of Ian Cormack’s story. I won’t give any spoilers, but this is as good as it gets for a prequel. Peter Nobel’s narration is spot on, as usual.

Surprisingly moving

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A good story that jumps around a bit, especially in the last few chapters, where it flip-flops between the past and present of the main character.

I'm not going to go into the story at all, as it is too easy to drop spoilers, but I will say that the characters are believable (mostly), and I found it easy to engage with the overall scenario presented.

As for the Performance:
I don't know how it happened, but someone reigned-in Ric Jerrom's over-enthusiastic 'bedtime-story narration' style.
A massive improvement over what he did to "Prador Moon."

I've bought the next in this sequence already and am really looking forward to it.

A much better reading of a good book!

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Comparing this to Asher’s more recent books you can tell the difference- this feels a bit more clunky and the plotting doesn’t feel quite so compelling.

Still, not bad, just not as good as other stuff he’s done.

Not bad. Not as good as his later polity work

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really enjoyed this and its been many years since I read the book, glad I bought the audible book.

Great book

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Not the best of his novels that I've read. A bit of a let down after Prador Moon

The Prador are fantastic!

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I had read the Rise of the Jain series which I very much enjoyed. I found Shadow of the Scorpion to be promising but the dialogue and the narration often made me think i’d walked into a kindergarten class. The main protagonist Cormac was learning and growing but even in his adult life his speech and thinking sounded like that of a four year old. I will however try the next book to see how close it gets to the Rise of the Jain.

Interesting series start but childish at many levels

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I would like to start by saying my previous listen with this narrator was negative and I was not going to purchase more books he narrates but I was keen to hear this book, the narrator has improved dramatically! As for the actual book, I am really enjoying my Neal Asher binge at present and look forward to my next listen as I’m invested in the Polity universe Neal has created

A great introduction to Agent Cormac

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Immensely disappointing. Simplistic, juvenile rubbish. I didn’t like the narration, it all sounded so false and unbelievable, (accepting the fact that it is a Sci-Fi book). I had been looking forward to this after The Technician and Prador Moon. Not sure that I will bother with the rest of series. Avoid.

Shadow of the Scorpion

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