The Skinner (Spatterjay) - Tapa blanda

To the remote planet Spatterjay come three travellers with very different missions. Janer is directed there by the hornet Hive-mind; Erlin comes to find the sea captain who can teach her to live; and Keech - dead for seven hundred years - has unfinished business with a notorious criminal. Spatterjay is a watery world where the human population inhabits the safety of the Dome and only the quasi-immortal hoopers are safe outside amidst a fearful range of voracious life-forms. Somewhere out there is Spatterjay Hoop himself, and monitor Keech cannot rest until he can bring this legendary renegade to justice for atrocious crimes committed centuries ago during the Prador Wars. Keech does not realise that Hoop's body is running free on an island wilderness, while his living head is confined in a box on an Old Captain's ships. Nor does he know that the most brutal Prador of all is about to pay a visit, intent on wiping out all evidence of his wartime atrocities. Which means major hell is about to erupt in this chaotic waterscape.

Neal Asher was born in Billericay, Essex, and divides his time between the UK and Crete. The majority of his novels are set within one future history, known as the Polity universe which encompasses many classic science fiction tropes including world-ruling artificial intelligences, androids, hive minds and aliens. His full-length novels include Gridlinked, The Skinner, The Line of Polity, Cowl, Brass Man, The Voyage of the Sable Keech, Hilldiggers, Prador Moon, Line War, Shadow of the Scorpion, Orbus and The Technician. His Owner series novels include The Departure, Zero Point and Jupiter War.