This is good. It is as intelligent as the more contemporary 'The Bridge' (which so far is still my favorite novel coming from Iain Banks that I have yet read - I am still wading through his books), it is not set in the Culture series, but as a stand alone sci-fi novel with a very unique aspect about it, just as all his novels contain. However, my main misgiving (which also stopped me reading the book the first time I attempted it several years ago) was the phonetically written sections by a character called Bascule. However, this attempt of re-reading was a success, and whilst most would be put off from the 'text-speech' at first, it does become easier as the book progresses and you get used to it. It took me a while mind, but the character who speaks in this manner also has a comedic value too. Give it time and you get used to it, but it does make the novel slower to read.

‎Feersum Endjinn on Apple Books

Iain M. Banks is the only sf author I've actively pursued in years. His Culture novels have been particularly interesting, their sociological framework being unusually intelligent for the genre. Most irritating is that one of the major protagonists is only represented phonetically (e.g. the book's title)--a disability mentioned but once explicitly, a device which serves no purpose so far as I could see except to slow down the reading. Riting a revyoo as thoh I wuz Bascule seems 2 me the obveeyus cors. 1 mit even say the playd cors; the yoosd up an cleechayd cors. But a browz uv the revyoos postd on Goodreedz indicayts uderwize. I wood ½ thot bi now sumbudy wood ½ ritten a revyoo in the styl uv Bascule but it apeerz not 2 b the cays. This is the time of the encroachment and everything is about to change. Although the dimming sun still shines on the vast, towering walls of Serehfa Fastness, the end is close at hand. The King knows it, his closest advisers know it, and the crypt knows it too; so an emissary has been sent – an emissary who holds the key to all their futures. I have read all of Iain M Banks books, and I read Feersum Endjinn the year after it was first published in 1994. This is probably the only Science Fiction book of Iain M Banks that I had read problems finishing.A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. Man, this book was hard to get through... about a third of it is written from the point of view of young Bascule, who uses an idiosyncratic orthography that is part cellphone text and l33tspeak, and part Charlie Gordon in his pre-savant phase. In its way, this is quite a sustained achievement, but having to sound out the narrative for those parts word by word does rather interrupt the flow. Feersum Endjinn was generally well-received, the completeness of the plot and the detailed description of the mega-architecture and the crypt were praised by critics.

Iain banks Culture : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming

Sometimes a book has so many incredible elements that it defies easy summary. Compound that with the fact that it shares themes with some of your favorite genre classics, and that it is written by the incredibly-talented Iain M. Banks, and you have the recipe for a very unique reading experience. As I read the story, I was forcibly reminded of some classic books in the genre, particularly Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and the Stars , Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker , Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast , and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash , Diamond Age , and Anathem . Count Alandre Sessine VII, a military commander who has been killed numerous times, most recently by assassination. He awakes in the Cryptosphere, having lost his eighth and final real-world life, and now has eight virtual lives (which rapidly dwindle) to discover who has been plotting against him and why. So it’s not a Culture novel, yet is full with markers of the Culture. The planet of the fastness Serehfa is Earth. A future Earth post-diaspora, when all who remain behind live in technology they can neither control nor comprehend; which is slowly falling in on itself, like parts of the fastness itself, kilometre-high walls and rooms now rubble around volcanic cones; entire levels succumbing to erosionary geological processes. Gadfium, who uses bed meetings as a cover for espionage, much like in The Algebraist (and possibly in The Business, which either way had the ‘count to 1024 in binary using your fingers’ bit). The meeting is one where she declines the comfortably jocular offer of sex (more on that in a moment), yet her relationship with another woman, observatory chief Clispier implies a recognisable queerness:As with his friend Ken MacLeod (another Scottish writer of technical and social science fiction) a strong awareness of left-wing history shows in his writings. The argument that an economy of abundance renders anarchy and adhocracy viable (or even inevitable) attracts many as an interesting potential experiment, were it ever to become testable. He was a signatory to the Declaration of Calton Hill, which calls for Scottish independence. Bastule the Teller is the dyslexic narrator whose main job is to dive into the Cryptosphere and retrieve lost information, often by interrogating stored personalities that have been dormant for millennia. He is also on a mission to find his tiny ant friend Ergates, and also becomes entangled with various plots as he delves deeper into the virus-infected chaos regions of the Crypt. In an interview in 2004, Banks stated that "It probably could become a trilogy, but for now it’s a standalone novel." [2] The Algebraist was shortlisted for the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Novel. [3] In 2011, the novel was short-listed for the NPR Top-100 Science Fiction, Fantasy Titles. [4] Release details [ edit ] The writing, when the story goes to another POV, is as remarkable as anything else Banks as ever written: descriptive without ever being boring, tense, thrilling and slightly humourous when it has to be, and always very evocative. Banks' finest and most challenging achievement in Feersum Endjin comes whenever he shifts his narrative to Bascule, the dyslexic Teller who writes his story phonetically because he can't write it any other way. His accent, which feels a little North London and a little Glasgow, makes the phonetic spelling just a touch more challenging for the reader (particularly if the reader is from North America), but if one takes one's time, and even reads it aloud, the pay off is worth the work it takes to read.