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I just finished reading Cowl (2004), a science fiction novel by Neal Asher. Of the seemingly endless supply of books he’s written, I chose “Cowl” because A) it is a stand alone novel where most of his works are bound to series and B) it was available through my local public library system.

Okay, the third reason is that it is specifically a time travel story, and I’m a sucker for time travel stories.

Most of the books of Asher’s I’ve read thus far (the reviews are elsewhere on my blog) are set off Earth, well outside the solar system, and so far in the future that anything that even vaguely refers to Earth is incredibly removed.

So it was odd to start out with the protagonist Polly, a teenage prostitute and drug addict in the 22nd century. Through an association with the sister of a soldier who had access to odd technology, she ends up in the crosshairs of a “U-gov” assassin named Tack. She sees the soldier Nandru killed by something called the Torbeast while Tack is trying to kill her.

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