Neal Asher’s cyberpunk novel Gridlinked, has some really great elements to its construction but suffers ultimately from a week ending that feels rushed and doesn’t actually make very much sense. That’s not to say its really that bad overall, in fact it works very well up to a point. To clarify this you need to understand a bit of the story.
Although it seems fairly convoluted at first the story unfolds very nicely explaining the incredible away as we follow a futuristic mystery. The novel stars a man named Iain Cormac, he is for all intents and purposes a super spy a la James Bond. Actually the novel plays quite consistantly like a James Bond film. Cormac is pulled from his deep cover mission some 6 centuries in the future after blowing his cover. The title of the novel is Gridlinked, this refers to the practice of hard wiring your head so that you can have instant access to unlimited information. Our hero has been Gridlinked for 10 years past the reccomended exposure time, and suffers from a lack of emotional expression. This leads to his cover being blown, but it doesn’t really matter as he’s imediately sent on another mission. This one to figure out what happened to a the interplanitary transporter (sort of like a personal wormhole or a teleporter) that has just exploded killing ten million people. He is also sent to determine what if any involvement a mysterious alien creature thought to be dead has to do with the incident. To complicate matters more Cormac is being relentlessly hunted down by the leader of the terrorist cell that he just exposed. He’s also been ordered to abandon his gridlinking, effectively blinding him. Finally to make matters worse everyone seens to be being manipulated by this alien entity, or is it actually the immortal Japanese spy that keeps popping up. Anyhow, this convoluted tale boils down pretty well to a rather straightforward chase after the mystery kind of book. And that's what it does a really good job at.
The problem with this novel is the ending. For the most part it all makes sense, we like and understand the characters and the technology, which is no small feet for a book set 7 hundred years in the future. The problem occurs when, after 520 pages I might add, we finally get the big payoff. This is the point where the mystery is supposd to be revealed, but guess what, it isn’t. And I don’t mean it isn’t revealed in a waiting for the sequel kind of way, or a just confusing not all is answered and we accept it kind of way. No; this book in the span of like five pages at the end, completely falls apart. Nothing makes any sense, and the characters don't seem to notice !!! It’s rediculous, that finally confronted with the mastermind super alien behind everything that you wouldn’t even ask it what the heck it was doing ? I mean, it wouldn’t take much, it didn’t even have to be particularly revealing or exciting or anything, I just wish it’d made sense. It feels like Asher’s publisher said, ‘ok Neal, the books passed the 500 page mark, you’d better wrap it up now or no more money …’ Of course this probably isn’t what happened. I think that Asher just never worked out what was actually going on in his book, and then got screwed at the end. It’s a weird thing, because this book could’ve been good. Not great but definately as entertaining as any Bond film. Instead, I finished reading, totally lost and confused by the flurry of nonsense. Then I went back and read it again to make sure it wasn’t just me being thick. Sadly, it wasn’t. So, in the end this book is a cool cyberpunk sci fi, but don’t read it unless your prepared for a very dissapointing ending.
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