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The Gabble: And Other Stories (2008)

by Neal Asher(Favorite Author)

4 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0230709257 (ISBN13: 9780230709256)

languge

English

genre

Science Fiction

publisher

Tor Books

review 1: Ten short stories (some not so short) make up this collection. Almost all of the stories are strongly aligned with the themes in his novels, and I was pleased to see Asher using the opportunity to fill out some of the interesting creatures in his macabre menagerie. He is just as good at short form story telling as knocking out a novel, and he has definitely honed this craft since The Engineer, which certainly wasn't up to this standard. I had a lot of fun reading this collection and would recommend to anyone who is a fan.
review 2: I have to state up front that I love Neal Asher books so I knew I would enjoy this. In all honesty there are few others for whom I'd bother reading short story collections. I generally believe that short stories, if they are of any ... moremerit, will be developed into novellas and so what you have in a short story collection is ideas that didn't make the cut but where the author didn't quite want to bin them either. Is this the case with the Gabble? Yeah, sort of. Some of the stories here are little more than Vignettes, others have all the standard Asher excitement but then end too quickly. Is it worth the time? I would say so. As I say, I love Asher and I particularly enjoy the polity world he's created. He seems to be focusing on the excellent Owner series for the moment so if / when he ever returns to the Polity is yet to be seen. So after some heavy intellectual work with Accelerando by Charles Stross I wanted some fast paced easy reading that I knew I'd enjoy. It delivered in spades and soon I was back in the world of Gabbleducks, Jain and amusing AIs. If you like the polity and it's too soon to read the Cormac series again, this isn't a waste of your time. less

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