Antihero Richard Pike is a professional killer and insufferable snob who finds female malignos sexually irresistible, and has shacked up with Gala, one of the few who lives above ground. He loves her so much that he rents out her body and lives on the earnings. Then Gala's past catches up, and to rescue her from drug-induced mindlessness Pike faces a literal journey to the centre of the earth. The path descends through exotic wonders: a freak show of caged humans, flying swarms of hungry child malignos, awesome cities and seas, shadow-beings and chimeras, a descent through the maelstrom to a tropical Torrid Zone, semi-magical tricks with space and gravity whose secret is long lost--and at the core the city or world of Pandemonium, where all answers await.

Pike suffers considerably, usually through his own folly: pursuing sexily demonic girls leads him into traps, and he's repeatedly told (often comically, and sometimes by himself) what a bastard he is. He betters himself a little, though, and carries his underworld quest to an unexpected end. Calder's darkly poetic imagination and rich landscape-building make for enjoyable reading. --David Langford

Earth Central, humanity’s ruling intelligence, knows Orlandine was tricked into releasing her weapon, and fears the Jain are behind it. The prador king knows this too – and both foes gather fleets of warships to surround the disc.

The alien Client is returning to the accretion disc to save the last of her kind, buried on a ship deep within it. She upgrades her vast weapons platform in preparation, and she’ll need it. Her nemesis also waits within the disc’s swirling dusts – and the Jain have committed genocide before.

In this second volume of Rise of the Jain, Neal Asher takes us on a thrilling ride into interstellar politics and impending war. The Warship is set in Neal's popular Polity universe.