Ethan

Sheriff Hayden Duke was born on the starship Pilgrim, like his father, and his father before him. He’s got a long way to go before he can rest. But how can he when the entire world is under siege? By demonic aliens. By a brutal thug who calls himself King. By an unknown and powerful threat that may be responsible for the end of humankind. The road may be long. The odds may be bad. The stakes may be high. You can’t keep a good Sheriff down.

Sheriff Hayden Duke was born on the starship Pilgrim, like his father, and his father before him. He expects to die any second. He's already been attacked by demonic aliens, rogue soldiers, and even the people he thought were his friends. He's survived. Barely. He's entered a strange new world. A world he knows nothing about. A world where hope has been buried beneath the claws of monsters and the boots of a tyrant. They took his wife. He has to find her. He has to survive. Another second. Another breath. He can never give up. He can never rest until she's back in his arms.

Sheriff Hayden Duke was born on the Pilgrim, and he expects to die on the Pilgrim, like his father, and his father before him. That's the way things are on a generation starship centuries from home. He's never questioned it. Never thought about it. And why bother? Access points to the ship's controls are sealed, the systems that guide her automated and out of reach. It isn't perfect, but he has all he needs to be content. Until a malfunction forces his engineer wife to the edge of the habitable zone to inspect the damage. 

From 800 years in the future, a runcible gate is opened into the Polity. Those coming through it have been tasked with taking the alien 'Maker' back to its home civilization in the Small Magellanic cloud. Once these refugees are safely through, the gate itself is rapidly shut down - because something alien is pursuing them. From those who get through, agent Cormac learns that the Maker civilization has been destroyed by a pernicious virus known as the Jain technology.

With a new game, Mass Effect Andromeda, set for release in 2017, the launch of a new series of Mass Effect novels is timely. The new game will take the story in a dramatic new direction and is set in a new region of space, with a new and deadly enemy.

They slept for hundreds of years, dreaming of a new home in the Andromeda galaxy. When finally they awake, their dreams of peace are shattered. These colonists - turian, salarian, asari, human, and more - face an uncharted galaxy and threats beyond understanding.

On the primitive world Cull, a knight errant called Anderson hunts a dragon, not knowing that elsewhere is a resurrected brass killing machine, Mr Crane, assisting in a similar hunt. Learning that this old enemy still lives, agent Cormac pursues while scientist Mika begins discovering the horrifying truth about an ancient alien technology. Each day is a survival struggle for the people of Cull. Ferocious insectile monsters roam their planet as they try to escape to their forefathers' starship, still orbiting far above them.

Neal Asher has firmly established himself as one of the leading British writers of science fiction. Most of his stories are set in a galactic future-scape called The Polity, and with The Gabble - and Other Stories, a collection of marvellously inventive and action-packed short stories, he takes us further into the manifold diversities of that amazing universe.