Against A Dark Background: Iain M. Banks

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The population of Golter was nearly wiped out ten thousand years ago; the past Decamillennium has been punctuated by any number of lesser wars which have nevertheless pocked the surface with wastelands and ruins. Feril stood too, smiling at the little girl as she bounced off the seat and took her mother's hand; the doors opened to an empty hall and they stepped out. It watched her watching her adopted child and thought - if it was not itself being overly sentimental now - that it detected in her outgoing care a kind of wary, protective joy, as though the continual act of observance was itself a source of inestimable satisfaction and - again, always assuming it was not suffering an attack of excessively romantic emotionalism - thought that it identified in itself a similar concern for her; a realisation that came accompanied with the sadness of knowing it might never see her or her daughter again. Spoiled Brat: Sharrow as a child and teenager; filled with resentment about the death of her mother and indulged by a father she had no respect for due to his losing ways, the child Sharrow sounds like an obnoxious little brat. Some other reviewers have described her as a Mary Sue, but I have to disagree: in my opinion, a Mary Sue is a character who is not only good at everything but also has everything work out swimmingly for her in the end.

But, the way the repeated flashbacks persistently positioned him as a morally ambivalent point of conflict between Sharrow and Breyghun; the near-rape of Sharrow; his repeated ineffectual bleating appearances in the novel that reminded us he was out there and presenting himself as an ally, but actually providing him with not exploration or development: the whole thing was plainly setting him up for a final-act appearance as the villain. uk/landing-page/little-brown-book-group/little-brown-book-group-company-information/">Little, Brown Book Group Limited.They don’t know what the others are thinking, but they know how the other in the group will react, and sometimes that’s more important. Where It All Began: After traveling around the world and across the system, Sharrow ends up right back at the Sea House, squaring off against her cousin and sister.

His Culture novels, and indeed, his other SF books, take the same dizzying scales and ideas but the writing is so much better. The various nasty cults are excellent, sometimes ridiculously humorous, sometimes easy to hate antagonists. The only thing to save her is to find the last remaining Lazy Gun and turn it over to them or her life is forfeit. The only thing that niggles me about this is that it was obvious from very early what the denouement was going to be.She realizes that the first force contained members of the Sad Brothers and she and Feril head for the Seahouse, taking the Lazy Gun with them.

In IMT threads, members of our community can promote their own work, including commercial projects and crowdfunding. I think at least one other Banks novel on my list, Transition, is also science fiction of more terrestrial sort. Banks may not be throwing you into the deep end, but he’s not going to save you from drowning either. I liked this one, but it had the most frustrating ending of all his books, and I’ve never been a big fan of any of his endings.Aside from the Lazy Gun, Sharrow always carries her HandCannon with a round in the breech (against the manufacturer's recommendation), which we're told within the first few pages, becomes important much later on.

Sharrow is the sworn enemy of a fanatical religious sect - the Huhsz – a group who assassinated her mother and have sworn to end the female line of her family in repayment for her ancestors’ theft of the cult’s most valuable treasure - a device known as a Lazy Gun. Most of the system is a capitalist aristocracy where noble families fight private wars that sometimes involve nuclear weapons.Read more about the condition Very Good: A book that has been read and does not look new, but is in excellent condition. The Thrail star system is coming up on its 20,000 anniversary of civilization and has colonized most of the solar system via 'terraforming' and space habitats. The almost randomly-inserted flashbacks often made it difficult to tell when everything was taking place, or even really where (some of the world building is slow dripped over hundreds of pages). This is my first Iain Banks novel since he passed away and I was concerned I'd be too upset to enjoy it fully. With a dedicated team sharing a passion for speculative fiction, Orbit is committed to broadening the audience for SF and Fantasy.