The Technician cover art

The Technician

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
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.

The Technician

By: Neal Asher
Narrated by: Peter Noble
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

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

Buy Now for £16.99

Buy Now for £16.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

In Neal Asher's The Technician, the Theocracy has been dead for twenty years, and the Polity rules on Masada – but it is an order that the rebels of the Tidy Squad cannot accept, and the iconic Jeremiah Tombs is top of their hitlist.

Tombs, meanwhile, has escaped his sanatorium. His insanity must be cured, because the near-mythical hooder, called ‘the Technician’, that attacked him all those years ago, did something to his mind even the AIs fail to understand. Tombs might possess information about the suicide of an entire alien race. It’s up to the war drone Amistad to discover this information, with the help of an ex-rebel Commander, the black AI Penny Royal and the amphidapt Chanter.

Meanwhile, in deep space, the mechanism the Atheter used to reduce themselves to animals stirs from slumber and begins to power-up its weapons . . .

Adventure Cyberpunk Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera Fiction

Listeners also enjoyed...

Area 51 cover art
Code Breakers: Prequel cover art
Mercury's Son cover art
Revelation Space cover art
The Quantum Magician cover art
Cthonia's Reckoning cover art
Intrinsic cover art
Atlas cover art
Predator: Incursion cover art
The Kasari Nexus cover art
Doctor Who: Engines of War cover art
Beyond the Aquila Rift cover art
Alien: Covenant Origins cover art
Infinite cover art

Critic reviews

The Technician is no doubt one of the best new novels I have read this year. It got a fantastic inner journey with fast-paced alien-world action.
I know that when a tale from him arrives that I’m going to get a story that I absolutely love.
All stars
Most relevant
THIS BOOK FILLS IN SOME GAPS FROM OTHER SERIES SET IN THIS UNIVERSE.WAS ENTHRALLED FROM START TO FINISH DID NOT SEE ANY OF THE TWISTS TURNS AND REVELATIONS COMING.IS THERE ROOM TO EXPAND ON THIS BOOK I HOPE SO IF NOT IT IS A MUST READ FOR ANYONE WHO LIKES THE NEAL ASHER UNIVERSE.

SUPERB ONE OFF STORY SET IN THE SAME UNIVERSE.

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

I am played by catch up with Neal Ashers books and an probably reading them out of order but I am enjoying each and every one. This book expands the story and fills in the gaps in my Polity knowledge and lore, great listen and Peter Nobles narration as always is outstanding

Engaging from start to finish

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

very good story with excellent work by the narrator to makes the voices distinctive, including the gabbleduck

Good gabble

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

One of my favourite in the series. And really well voiced over . Now on to the next one

Top Class Again!!

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

In these now enlightened times humanity has mostly outgrown religion in all forms.
Religion is fast withering in the cleansing light of knowledge and rational thought now spreading throughout A.I.-controlled human space known as "The Polity."

On one planet, previously held in thrall by the vicious cult created by "The Prophet Zelda Smythe", humanity in all its new forms struggles alongside other intelligences to make sense of the strange and extremely deadly indigenous lifeforms.
There is a secret to be uncovered, clues are everywhere, and things are changing.
Something is coming...


There are, as always, some really strange pronunciations of some words.
These are often down to dialects, regional or continental variations present in modern English.
Where a lot of these obviously gifted narrators and actors fall down is on the pronunciation of scientific terms.
The least they could do is familiarise themselves with how the name or acronym is commonly spoken.
I'm not going to point any out as another listener may not notice and I might ruin their enjoyment of this otherwise superb reading from Peter Noble.


I personally struggled with the visceral impact of the subject matter at the beginning due my own life experiences at the hands of the 'Pious.'
However, having listened to the other books from this universe, I persevered, and this became cathartic experience.

I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I hope you do too.

A search for sanity and answers to a riddle

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

See more reviews