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The UK seems to be full of them. the first novel, Prador Moon is available for 1 pence second hand. Think I'll give that a try...

I wouldn't start with Prador Moon though - it is awesome, but it might not be the best introduction to his stuff.

You should start with the Cormac series, then the Spatterjay series, then do the 'one offs'.

You will NOT be disappointed.

After reading about 1/2 of the first Cormac book, I immediately went online and ordered all available Asher "Polity" books.

And I eagerly await the next one!

Im' about 3/4 of the way through Gridlinked now.

I ended up DL'ing it to my phone (paid for mind you), and reading it like crazy.

Phone batteries don't last very long like this.

For once I need a kindle.

Asher is good, but some of the later books really suffer under the weight of what's come before. I reviewed all of them for SFCrowsnest (Shameless plug to my review archive here: http://www.sffmeta.com/showreviewer?reviewerNo=224) and found that as things went on, they got harder to read.

Gridlinked, Line of Polity, Brass Man, The Skinner and Line War are the best ones, following a clear character and dipping into lots of cool settings and background. Some of the others, especially The Technician and Hilldiggers, I thought lacked a clear character arc and suffered from having to spend the first half of the book explaining the increasingly complicated setting and backstory.

I think Alastair Reynolds and Richard Morgan do a much better job of writing books that work as standalone pieces of fiction. Morgan's Thirteen (Black Man in the UK), and Reynolds The Prefect are particularly excellent and link well with the Infinity background.

Other books that work well with some of the Infinity settings are Paolo Bacigalupi's superb The Windup Girl and the lesser known trilogy by Joel Shepherd, Crossover/Breakaway/Killswitch, which is a really good space opera about an android soldier. Ian McDonald's near-future stuff mixing nanotechnology and exotic cultures like Brasyl, The Dervish House and River of Gods are particularly evocative of some of the Haqqislam stuff.

darrkespur wrote:Asher is good, but some of the later books really suffer under the weight of what's come before. I reviewed all of them for SFCrowsnest (Shameless plug to my review archive here: http://www.sffmeta.com/showreviewer?reviewerNo=224) and found that as things went on, they got harder to read.

Gridlinked, Line of Polity, Brass Man, The Skinner and Line War are the best ones, following a clear character and dipping into lots of cool settings and background. Some of the others, especially The Technician and Hilldiggers, I thought lacked a clear character arc and suffered from having to spend the first half of the book explaining the increasingly complicated setting and backstory.

An interesting take, which I must say I disagree with - to a point.

I will certainly admit that you'll benefit from having read the Cormac and Spatterjay series of books first.

If you do that, I don't think you'll have any difficulties at all in terms of setting, backstory, technology, etc.

Thanks for the other recommendation too!

I don't think that you can't understand the setting, backstory, etc, more so that in the later books I felt like too much attention was paid to including all the aspects of the (admittedly cool) background, to the detriment of the main storyline. The earlier books were leaner and told better stories as a result (Brass Man and Line of Polity in particular).

Alpharius wrote:I wouldn't start with Prador Moon though - it is awesome, but it might not be the best introduction to his stuff.
You should start with the Cormac series, then the Spatterjay series, then do the 'one offs'.

Ah ok, I took the timeline to be a reading order for things to make the most sense.

Books 1 and 2 ordered as they were cheap on Amazon. I'll save the other one for later

The timeline is there to help you make sense of where all the stories fit - but I think the best order to read them in is:

Cormac Series (I'd still read "Shadow of the Scorpion LAST though)

Spatterjay Series

Then:

Prador Moon
The Gabble (short story collection)
The Technician
Hilldiggers (arguably the 'weakest' of the bunch, but still quite good!)

Alpharius wrote:The timeline is there to help you make sense of where all the stories fit - but I think the best order to read them in is:

Cormac Series (I'd still read "Shadow of the Scorpion LAST though)

Spatterjay Series

Then:

Prador Moon
The Gabble (short story collection)
The Technician
Hilldiggers (arguably the 'weakest' of the bunch, but still quite good!)

Yeah, I'd agree with this order too. And despite my comments above, it's still an awesome set of stories!