Infinity Engine: Transformation: Book Three

By Neal Asher

Infinity Engine is the third and final novel in the Transformation trilogy by bestselling science fiction author Neal Asher, following Dark Intelligence and War Factory.

A man battles for his life, two AIs vie for supremacy and a civilization hangs in the balance . . .

Several forces now pursue rogue artificial intelligence Penny Royal, hungry for revenge or redemption. And the Brockle is the most dangerous of all. This criminal swarm-robot AI has escaped confinement and is upgrading itself, becoming ever more powerful in anticipation of a showdown.

Events also escalate aboard the war factory. Here Thorvald Spear, alien prador, and an assassin drone struggle to stay alive, battling insane AIs and technology gone wild. Then the Weaver arrives - last remnant of a race that died out two million years ago. But what could it contribute to Penny Royal's tortuous plans?

And beyond the war factory a black hole conceals a tantalizing secret which could destroy the Polity. As AIs, humans and prador clash at its boundary, will anything survive their explosive final confrontation?

'Transcends the borders of morality, existence, and spacetime itself' – Publishers Weekly

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Mar 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781447249405

Neal Asher

Neal Asher divides his time between Essex and Crete, mostly at a keyboard and mentally light years away. His full-length novels are as follows. First is the Agent Cormac series: Gridlinked, The Line of Polity, Brass Man, Polity Agent and Line War. Next comes the Spatterjay series: The Skinner, The Voyage of the Sable Keech and Orbus. Also set in the same world of the Polity are these standalone novels: Hilldiggers, Prador Moon, Shadow of the Scorpion, The Technician, Jack Four and Weaponized. The Transformation trilogy is also based in the Polity: Dark Intelligence, War Factory and Infinity Engine. Set in a dystopian future are The Departure, Zero Point and Jupiter War, while Cowl takes us across time. The Rise of the Jain trilogy is comprised of The Soldier, The Warship and The Human, and is also set in the Polity universe.

Reviews for Infinity Engine

[jercox · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Good, but too much with the AI as god stuff. Basically, everyone has faith. The god like knowledge of the future is a bit much, and the twist on that is reminiscent of Dune.

[saltmanz · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Pulls in all the threads from the previous two books and deftly ties them all together. A fantastic finale. Highly recommended: just make sure to read the entire trilogy back-to-back, there's so much going on here.

[nmele_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoy Neal Asher''s expansive, imaginative novels. This one has a particularly clever twist on the often popular notion that we are living in a computer simulation. Also lots of explosions, super science, and action, as well redemption for most of the main figures.

[shrike58 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

By the end of the middle book in this trilogy I was having some doubts about this whole enterprise and whether Asher would pull it all together in a satisfying manner between how Penny Royal's effortless manipulations of events were stretching my suspension of disbelief, Thorvald Spear's growing doubts about his whole mission in pursuing the AI being and the apparent demise of the Prador father-captains whose fight drove much of the plot up till that point. At the end of the day Asher does pull it all together though, even if the increasing emphasis on the character The Brockle feels like some sort of reverse deus ex machina deployed to keep the plot machinery going. The main point is that Spear does work though his emotional and philosophical issues in a convincing fashion so that when the emotional climax of the book is reached the pay-off feels like it's been earned. I'll admit that I wish that the people who react viscerally to Asher's politics (a no-nonsense Libertarianism) could offer an informed critique vis-a-vis the man's fiction but this trilogy can be read as a tract against a certain ends-justify-the-means mentality; even if one is truly caught in such a position of existential survival the moral and psychological costs are high and Asher does seem to be trying to deal honestly with the with the implications of the universe he's created. Certainly some of main characters, human and AI alike, are calling BS on the direction of the Polity before it's all over.