Thank goodness that's done. The first half is decent enough. Two people are separately flung back in time. One is intercepted by a member of an advanced civilization, while the other bounces through historical periods (including the ever-popular Romans) and dodges various prehistoric beasts, all in an effort to survive. It's engaging, despite Neal Asher's slightly clumsy writing and even more awkward dialogue. Most of the dialogue is just exposition anyway, so there's not much chance for it to b...

Before Neal Asher devoted himself to churning out endless novels in the Polity universe (starting with Gridlinked), he dabbled in other science fiction subgenres. With Cowl, we get a dose of 'fun with time travel'. I'll be honest, I've never been a huge fan of time travel fiction and those supposed paradoxes, like 'what if you went back in time and offed your own dad before you were even a twinkle in his eye?' But Asher brings his signature panache and flair to craft a truly intriguing tale in C...

Wow, this was a fascinating ride! I've been a fan of Neal Asher's work for a while now, and I didn't really expect to see a novel set outside of the vast world-building structure he's created since. But here we are. And his knack for seizing a big concept and torturing his characters with it is completely intact. Here's the awesome part: it takes place on a future, post-war dystopian Earth, but the core conflict is actually a vast time war with two sides going back in time to sabotage each oth...

If it weren't for the Back to the Future trilogy, Neal Asher's *Cowl* would easily be the coolest time travel story ever, in my opinion. This book was one of the fastest-paced reads I've ever experienced, and Asher manages to pack so much action and intricate plot development into multiple timelines and locations. It all culminates in a massive, mind-blowing conclusion. Sure, it gets confusing in places, but everything is eventually explained, and it all clicks into place. Absolutely fantastic –...

If you've ever read a time travel novel and thought, "The convoluted plot is nice, but what would really hit my sweet spot would be a plethora of angry characters, a less personable Darth Vader, and enough extreme violence to make Quentin Tarantino think it's all a bit over the top," then the book for you may finally exist, and Neal Asher has made it possible. You might be surprised that it doesn't exist already, and maybe it did, and I just missed it somewhere along the line (I've read a decent...

This has to be one of the most gonzo, space operatic time-travel tales I've ever devoured. Awesome villains, dark heroes, crazy science—Neal Asher really throws everything into the mix. It sort of reminded me of Richard K. Morgan's *Altered Carbon*, where he grabs a killer high-science idea and then just drives the story forward at a blistering pace, showing it to you from a dozen different angles. Think of it as one of the best science fiction book reviews you'll ever read.The killer idea this ...

Coming from someone used to reading tales within Neal Asher's Polity universe, *Cowl* is a bit of a change of pace. The main theme revolves around time travel and a war between 43rd-century humans—or whatever they've evolved or been engineered into—and how it affects others down the timeline. The Cowl of the title is one super-engineered human who has traveled back to the beginning of time and, from there, sends organic time machines out to collect and return with human gene samples from across...

Let me kick things off by saying I thought the core idea behind *Cowl* was genuinely brilliant. Neal Asher's take on time travel and alternate realities was incredibly well-developed and unlike anything I've encountered before. Or, maybe he just pushed those concepts further than I've seen anyone else do. The pacing was solid; I never really felt bored. Naturally, with books that involve time travel and similar themes, you inevitably have to put in a bit more effort to keep track of when things...

Revisiting an old favorite by a favorite author. *Cowl* is a time travel novel with the usual Asher twist—it's bloody, intelligent, and often laced with dark humor. If you're looking for great sci-fi books, look no further. When teen prostitute Polly and brainwashed government hitman Tack get caught up by an organic time machine that will only travel backwards, to the point before complex life on Earth arose, they're supposed to be genetic samples for Cowl, a genetically modified future human. T...

A genuinely amusing time-travel novel, built on the "many-worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics (an interpretation, I might add, for which there's absolutely no solid evidence or compelling need). Asher's got the cheeky brilliance to swipe Heinlein's classic answer to the time-travel conundrum – "How do I always end up in the same spot on Earth despite its orbit, rotation, and all that jazz?" – and tweak it just enough to call it his own. It's also a blast to escape Asher's usual "Polity" ...