For those of you familiar with Asher's Polity universe the first thing you should know is that this a non-Polity story. The second thing you should know is that you simply won't care. This is trademark Asher all the way, simply resonating with the distinctive and familiar Asher voice. Asher is a natural story-teller and writes with an exuberance that defies comparison. No one crams as much energy, science, terror, adrenaline, blood, explosions, monsters, philosophy, politics, religion, technology, ideas, intelligence, and both the redeemably good and irredeemably evil into his books. The important thing though is no one makes you have a fraction of the fun Asher does when he writes. You ENJOY yourself when reading Asher!!! If there is anything wrong with this novella it is simply that it is a novella not a novel. I wish I could have kept reading indefinitely.

Africe Zero features an ancient cyborg who more less Lone Rangers, albeit somewhat reluctantly, around Africa keeping an eye on the local flora and fauna and the human enclaves that still exist. If you have read the polity books, just think "Golem". The resultings adventures feature all the action, violence, and blood spatters you learn to crave from Asher, the complex plot developments, and as many crazed and insane evil bigots and religious fanatics as your imagination could care to blow away. I suspect that this novella came before the polity novels because you do definitely see the seeds of the idea for the Golems and Dracomen featured there. I whole-heartedly recommend that you shell out the bucks for this one. Asher always delivers more adrenaline charged fun per dollar than any other writer out there.

Neal Asher's work is the perfect translation of comic book energy to big-screen-style narrative. This book, related in the deadpan first person of an Edgar Rice Burroughs type hero, pits a virtually unstoppable cyborg steward of a transformed far-future Africa against environmental vandals, ruthless corporate schemers, and sadistic religious fanatics, but as usual there is more to his larger-than-life characters than at first it seems. Harshly logical and gleefully brutal, this disarmingly juvenile but richly themed work carries forward the best pulp tradition with visceral, steamrolling conviction.