The Soldier cover art

The Soldier

Preview

£0.00 for first 30 days

Try for £0.00
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

The Soldier

By: Neal Asher
Narrated by: Peter Noble
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

Her mission is vital. Her failure is unthinkable.

A hidden corner of space is swarming with lethal alien technology, a danger to all sentient life. It's guarded by Orlandine, who must keep it contained at any cost - as it has the power to destroy entire civilizations. She schemes from her state-of-the-art weapons station, with only an alien intelligence to share her vigil. But she doesn't share everything with Dragon....

Orlandine is hatching a plan to obliterate this technology, removing its threat forever. For some will do anything to exploit this ancient weaponry, created by a long-dead race called the Jain. This includes activating a Jain supersoldier, which may breach even Orlandine's defences.

Meanwhile, humanity and the alien prador empire keep a careful watch over this sector of space, as neither can allow the other to claim its power. However, things are about to change. The Jain might not be as dead as they seemed - and interstellar war is just a heartbeat away.

The Soldier is the first novel in the Rise of the Jain series by best-selling science fiction author Neal Asher.

©2018 Neal Asher (P)2018 Macmillan Digital Audio
Adventure Fiction Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera Space Cyberpunk Heartfelt War
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

Renegade cover art
Area 51 cover art
Revelation Space cover art
The Collapsing Empire cover art
Exiled: Void Wraith Prequel Story cover art
State of Chaos cover art
Time Tunnel: The Twin Towers cover art
The Singularity Trap cover art
The Last Exodus cover art
The Will of the Many cover art
Intrinsic cover art
Tin Man: A Galaxy's Edge Prequel cover art
House of Blades cover art
Predator: Incursion cover art
The Quantum Magician cover art
Edge of Reality cover art

What listeners say about The Soldier

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    173
  • 4 Stars
    75
  • 3 Stars
    27
  • 2 Stars
    8
  • 1 Stars
    3
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    173
  • 4 Stars
    68
  • 3 Stars
    15
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    2
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    153
  • 4 Stars
    66
  • 3 Stars
    30
  • 2 Stars
    7
  • 1 Stars
    4

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great exciting story, great characters, well told

A great exciting story with varied and interesting characters. Love the hoopers and the drones. Setup nicely for the next book. Good narration. Recommended .

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Answers some questions from previous books

If you’ve enjoyed previous Neal Asher books, you’ll enjoy this one :-)

Expands the story of the Jain, where they came from, what caused the Jain nodes, and what happened to the Jain themselves ... looking forward to more in the series.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Complex, gripping and exciting

Asher tells a good story and "The soldier" doesn't disappoint in this respect. It's filled with great characters to which you can attach your emotions as they whirl and dance through a story of immense complexity. Yet despite it's arcane nature, not a moment of this audiobook leaves me feeling unsatisfied.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great book. Love the Universe

This was my fourth book in the Polity Universe and the new story started by Neil is amazing and I cant wait for the next part.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Seemed a bit silly

It's pretty pulpy. The premise of the whole thing is pretty odd and the characters are unidimensional. Gave up on it.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

The endless Clash of Titans

I normally really enjoy the scale and the stories by Neal Asher but this left me cold. If you love relentless battles between ageless and oddly named machine entities where matter or energy requirements mean nothing and the human scale is irrelevant then this is for you. Personally I was worn out and gave up before the end, this the first Asher book I’ve bounced off and been bludgeoned into submission by. There are only so many tendrils, pseudopods and variously coloured particle beams peeling away layers of armour but making no difference at all that I can withstand!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Big hard scifi set in Polity universe

Peter Noble has an excellent reading voice. He brings out the characters of human, Prador, AI, psychopath assassin drones and ancient alien species. He is easy to listen to with clear speach.

The story itself is typical Asher. Big, big science. Huge spaceships, vast solar building projects and exotic weapons. Asher's skill is to weave in human scale characters. The listener is never detached from the little people. Small story arcs intersperse with great space battles.

As ever Asher gives us another piece of the galactic jigsaw that explains how the current state of the universe comes to be.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

The start of something, incomplete. Not his best.

This is incomplete .. an interesting snippet, but probably only 1/2 or 1/3rd of a complete tale, and that ignores the backstory elements all the way back to the original 'Gridlinked', which IMO is superior in every way. The whole Asherverse is turning into a space opera with no end in sight,and the lurid prose becomes ever more EE Doc Smith-like, with ever more deadly particle beams coruscating wildly against ever more impenetrable shields (sorry 'hard fields').

The reading is pretty good although there were a couple of occasions where the timing (breaks between clauses) was wrong, or a wrong word was read (but without the printed text it is always possible that the written work was already wrong). I shall not be holding my breath for the next thrilling installment.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Neal Asher again superb

another superb glimpse into the polarity, masterly crafted, descriptive and exciting, awaiting more as ever

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

great but....

love Neil Asher and always enjoy his books but not keen on this narrator. I don't think he expresses the humour in the books very well and his voices for a lot of the characters leave a lot to be desired in my opinion

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful