Orbus by Neal Asher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As always, I'm surprised at how much I am eventually able to get into the psychology and biology and all the weirdness of the Prador aliens. I vacillate between annoyance and fascination.

Fortunately, I got into this by the end. Spatterjay's humble beginnings become very clear and the whole ultimate always-alive always-eating neverending replenishing food supply of everything on the planet, alive even as they're digested... or we are all digested, transforming, never dying... becomes clear at last.

No spoilers, but we've met the big bad before. :)

What we have here is a huge throwdown between different Prador factions including a handful of Polity peeps and the absolutely fantastic Sniper, the AI war drone. The interactions going on here made this novel a good deal better than average. :)

BUT, I will say that aside from the great end, the rest of the novel had quite a few dull parts. On the whole, I enjoyed it and the cool end made up for a ton of evils. Solid novel wrapping up Spatterjay. Better than the last, I think, but not quite as good as the first in the trilogy. I'm happy enough. :)

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