The Skinner is one of Asher's best novels.
Here we get the story of the planet Spatterjay, and an extremely vile pair of mass murdering torturer war criminals trading in slaves to the Prador in the war.
The war drone Sniper is again one of the main characters, and this is a good thing. The book does shift viewpoints from the ECS agent Sable Keech (who is dead) to a man on a mission from a planet of a sentient Hornet Hive through some others at times, and this is well handled.
The Old Captains on Spatterjay have a history with one of their early number - Jay Hoop - the Skinner, now a monster. Keech has also been hunting down what remains of his band of criminals, at the cost of his life, now being basically a cyborg zombie. Yeah, robot space zombie. Pretty cool.
The Spatterjay virus infects you, and gives you long life and strength - but will also turn you into an insane monster without maintenance. Plus most of the fauna on the planet is incredibly deadly as a result of surviving in this sort of ecosystem.
With all this, and Prador renegades, mercenaries, historians and really big fish to deal with the Spatterjay planetary Warden AI has a lot to keep track of.
4 out of 5
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