Iain M Banks – Inversions – Review – Not quite a Culture novel is it? July 17, 2010
Posted by showmescifi in scifi.Tags: Culture, De War, Iain M. Banks, Inversions
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We’ve become big fans of Iain M Banks and his Culture novels (recently we reviewed Player of Games).
Inversions is a very different book in that the Culture never actually shows up. There are no big grand ships or Orbitals…but there is an old dagger in the Doctor’s boot which obviously is a Knife-Missile.
The whole dueling tales of the Doctor and the Bodguard are brilliantly intertwined and we get a ‘hint’ of the culture (and maybe even Special Cirucumstances) but the viewpoint of the narrator, doens’t know of the culture.
Yes this is an entertaining book — but not in the way we might have expected. The backward ‘ancient’ ways of this planet (do we ever learn its name?) are never ‘outted’ by the Culture – then again De War does have that little on-going story about Lavisha…
No we didn’t see the ending coming — but the again that’s the best part of Banks books isn’t it? The fact that there is always some kind of magnificent conclusion that makes sense — but is still very much a surprise.
Show Me SciFi 
the whole thing is a total bore. The dialogue is laughable, every character is annoying as hell, the descriptive passages; be it of people or landscape are simply bad.
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Cheers!