Tim Haley's Reviews > The Departure

This book has been my least favorite read of Neal Asher material. In general I like his style with abundant and imaginative creatures and technology.

The first half or so of this book feels very rushed, and I felt under-developed. At times it read to me more like an outline of a book than a fully flushed out story. It had the feeling of the author being overly anxious to "get to the good part" of the story he knew was coming later. The author also has an odd predilection for using 'whilst' instead of 'while' that I found distracting.

There is definitely a political statement here. The decline of the world has been brought about by a big nightmare socialist government full of political correctness and hypocrisy. Having read his blog, it's hard not to feel like this is the author's revenge fantasy against socialists. Somewhat ironically, I feel like a left-leaning author could have written the same story where the big bad instead of government was an indomitable corporation that had taken control of everyone's lives. Maybe the only truth is that the little guy always get screwed regardless of who is in charge.