The Skinner cover art

The Skinner

The Spatterjay Series: Book 1

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
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.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

The Skinner

By: Neal Asher
Narrated by: William Gaminara
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £13.99

Buy Now for £13.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
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

Set in a lethal waterworld where sudden death is a way of life, The Skinner is the first novel in the far-future Spatterjay series by Neal Asher.

The savage ocean planet of Spatterjay draws visitors with very different agendas. Erlin is immortal and seeks a reason to keep living. Janer hosts a hive mind, which paid him to find this planet. And Keech is an agent of Earth who’s been dead for seven hundred years – but still hunts a notorious criminal.

On Spatterjay’s vast waterscapes, only the Old Captains risk the native life forms and their voracious appetites. However, they are now barely human. And somewhere out there Keech’s target – the Skinner – runs wild. Keech pursues the Skinner for atrocities committed in a centuries-past war, fought with the alien Prador. But one of these Prador is fast approaching Spatterjay to exterminate witnesses to his own war crimes. And he won’t spare its visitors.

Continue the science fiction adventure with The Voyage of Sable Keech and Orbus.

©2009 Neal Asher (P)2018 Macmillan Digital Audio Adventure Cyberpunk Fiction Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera Space Fantasy Thought-Provoking

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Element-X cover art
Unfathomed cover art
Barbarians at the Gates cover art
Mars McCoy Space Ranger, Volume One cover art
The Collapsing Empire cover art
Mega cover art
Cartwright's Cavaliers cover art
Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits cover art
Anathem cover art
Renegade cover art
The Quantum Magician cover art
Titans cover art
Ravenor cover art
Old Venus cover art
Invaders cover art
Alien: Out of the Shadows cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
Very enjoyable if somewhat hard to follow because of the jumps. Some sort of transportation would make it better.

Great 👍

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Somehow a Sci Fi story has been successfully mashed with a sea tale for this ambitious but interesting book. It was narrated well but sometimes it was a struggle to work out which ship the narrative was following. Overall though I loved it and will probably listen to it again in a year or two.

Very unique Sci Fi fantasy

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I do like this book especially the narration. I have probably listened to this over 5 times. humans hardened by virus, viscous crab like aliens, and AI with dubious moral values. what's not to love!!!!!

brilliant adventure

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I like Neal Asher anyway and have most of his paper books. However William Gaminara is so good at bringing these works to life that I am buying them again on Audible.

Great space opera, excellent narrator.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This is my first Asher and as far as I'm concerned he's up there now in my top three for concept SF, along with Banks and Reynolds. However I have to agree with Thomas about the seamless transitions in the narration makling the plot difficult to follow. This is a shame as otherwise the reading is excellent, and I'm still giving five because the book is that good. It's a complex plot with a large number of characters so it helps to have a printed copy to refer to if you get confused. I'll be moving on to the other two volumes in the set and then...more Asher please, Audible!

First class horror Sci-Fi

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

Any additional comments?

This a terrific story, well read. The world is distinctive and original. Can't wait to read the rest of the Spatterjay books.

The characters of Sniper, Ketch and the vile Frisk are superbly drawn. And it's a joy to read a high-tech drone battle that is both creative and yet seems to make visual sense.

One nitpick.
Would the producers of the audio please please please please make the pauses between scenes longer than the pauses between normal sentences! It is SO confusing – especially in a book that has cross-cut scenes with three different ships – to run the sentences on. It often takes about a paragraph to realise that the new text is not a continuation of the previous scene.

It is the norm on all audio books, so I can't understand why it was not done on this title.

Thanks.

Great book. Great narrator. Needs pauses...

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

What did you like most about The Skinner?

Intelligent, funny, gruesome

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Skinner?

I love the universe created by Neal Asher (alien nanotech, super-intelligent fatherly AIs, war machines with graveyard senses of humour, etc) and this book is a great addition to the collection with some neat ideas

What about William Gaminara’s performance did you like?

All of it, his characterisation, particularly his relaxed northern drawl for a super intelligent, quietly psychotic war drone is brilliant

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Here comes the BOOOM!

Any additional comments?

Can you please get more Neal Asher on to Audible

Brilliant book from a great author

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Couldn't associate with any of the characters nor did I have any idea who I should be concerned for. Well read and probably a good book, just didn't ever grab my attention.

Just sort of drifted over me

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Great story, started a bit slow but they always do for me.
characters and creatures were described slowly throuought the book which I enjoyed (it wasn't all thrown at you at once). really enjoyed the way they merged futuristic and oldy worldy concepts together and lots of different diverse characters.

Great listen, enjoyed immensely

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Superbly read by William Gaminara, this book is engrossing from the first word, just as it was when I read it.



I am a huge Neal Asher fan and I think he is a far better sci-fi writer than the likes of Banks and Gibson. All his books are intelligent and yet still retain a sense of adventure so often missing these days.



What would make things perfect would be to have Gridlinked and the rest of the Ian Cormac books also with William narrating them. Oh, and then the Owner books please!

Stunningly good

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews