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The Departure

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The Departure

By: Neal Asher
Narrated by: Peter Noble
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About this listen

The Departure is the first gripping book in Neal Asher's near-future, science fiction Owner series.

The Argus Space Station looks down on a nightmarish Earth. And from this safe distance, the Committee enforces its despotic rule. There are too many people and too few resources, and they need twelve billion to die before Earth can be stabilized. So corruption is rife, people starve, and the poor are policed by mechanized overseers and identity-reader guns. Citizens already fear the brutal Inspectorate with its pain inducers. But to reach its goals, the Committee will unleash satellite laser weaponry, taking carnage to a new level.

This is the world Alan Saul wakes to, travelling in a crate destined for the Calais incinerator. How he got there he doesn’t know, but he remembers pain and his tormentor’s face. He also has company: Janus, a rogue intelligence inhabiting forbidden hardware in his skull. As Janus shows Saul an Earth stripped of hope, he resolves to annihilate the Committee and their regime. Once he’s discovered who he was, and killed his interrogator . . .

 Adventure Hard Science Fiction Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Space Opera

Critic Reviews

Fast, furious, violent, slightly tongue-in-cheek (I think), and a whole lot of fun that makes 1984 seem like a children’s tea party . . . the start of another promising series from Asher. Go on, dive in, you won’t be disappointed.
Delivers plenty of thrills, and the climax also sets up a very intriguing status quo for the second volume.
Action packed and thrilling, The Departure is a must for all fans of contemporary science fiction who haven’t experienced Asher’s visceral novels before.
The Orwellian intro had me utterly hooked right from the start. I simply couldn’t stop reading until I reached the end.
Fast, dramatic stuff . . . this is a book with lots of Asher trademarks: rapid pace, great action, messy consequences.
I had an absolute blast with this book . . . his work really does get better and better.
All stars
Most relevant
Well written and very good story. It wasn't quite what I thought it was going to be - more of a military sci-fi - but it's more of a futuristic Neuromancer style of book.

You'll find an interesting comparison between the politics of the world of the future and today's political evils also.

A very solid 4/5

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Neal Asher's Departed seems like an early prototype of popular themes that he favours throughout his writing, the hero's journey and transhumanists ascension. Maybe things will open out in the series, from his earlier cleches. Alan the protagonist is a hero's journey of an emotional attrophied uberman, and his relationship with his love interest is one dimensional and boring. I love Asher's books, and this is his worse so far, but still fun. Possibly because it repeats heroic themes from characters like Cormac, which though cleched is more complex. Asher's transhumanism themes are more roundly developed in books like Weaponised, Warbodies, Jack Four and The Transformation Trilogy. Rise of the Jain is proving to be good too. In this he finally has an interesting female character. Though it's debatable what female is in a post human world. And these post human entities can often have a similar quality in how they are written. It is an unfortunate dilemma, attempting to describe something that in principle we cannot understand. I love his later works and think they are inpired, but they are also disembodied with action and post human concepts. It is a schism, how to talk about human concerns for the audience in a post human world. Many authors end at transcendance, but like Egan and Banks his books can start with themes of transcendance. I hope he doesn't find this review to harsh, for I am a sincere fan.

Like an early prototype of Neal Washers themes and works.

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