"There
is a wealth of knowledge to be found in books."
This page contains reviews of books by Iain Banks books that I have read.
Iain Banks is a Scottish author of outstanding talent. He writes both gothic horror, and superb science fiction novels.
If you like Iain Banks books, you might want to join an Iain Banks discussion group by
sending an e-mail to
culture@busstop.org
with the word 'subscribe' as the subject.
His horror books include the following, in my order of preference:
This book, apart from being totally gripping, is also written in a way which is incredibly individual.
Normally a book is written in either the first person, the third person, or a combination of the two.
Complicity is written in the first and second person, with you as the murderer. This has to be done
very carefully to make the book readable, and it certainly is readable.
I highly recommend this book, but not to those of a nervous disposition!
The Wasp Factory is about a peculiar boy called Frank who lives on an island off the coast
of Scotland. To give you an idea about what the book is like, here is an extract from the blurb:
"Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through;"
This is more or less the story - Frank's life consists of wandering round the island, massacring rabbits
with dynamite, and going to the pub. He doesn't go to school because is 17, and he didn't when he was younger because he wasn't registered at birth. And
then, there is the Wasp Factory.
Frank made the factory from a clock face and a few other things, and to him it has a sort of religious value.
He puts a wasp into a hole in the face, and then it can take a few different routes to its doom. For example
it might fall into a Venus Fly Trap, or get electricuted. Frank interprets how it dies, and can work things out from it.
The Wasp Factory is a truly great book, and definitely worth a read.
The Crow Road is basically about the trials and tribulations of Prentice McHoan. The
sub-plot is that Prentice has to discover what has happened to his Uncle Rory who went missing while Prentice was quite young. This is not a horror book.
During this book Prentice falls in love, or obsession (depending on how you want to look at it),
gets drunk a lot, and does some detective work.
Prentice is very troubled, and turns to stealing his father's books (who is an author) from shops. This
was because he was kicked out of university. He also has his fair share of deaths to deal with. Another person
that features in the book is his Uncle Hamish. He has his own religion which is quite amusing to read about.
As with most Iain Banks books, it is written superbly. This book jumps back and forward in time a lot, and although I didn't
find it too hard to follow, it may be tricky for some. It is worth persevering though - all is revealed in the end!! The Crow Road is a good book, but does not follow in the
path of the others - there is very little violence. Nevertheless, this book is worth reading, but bear in mind that it may
not be quite as appealing to someone who enjoyed the others. This is for a different sort of person.
Canal Dreams is about a world famous cellist called Hisako Onoda (at last, someone
that isn't a Scot). This book tells of her journey to Europe from Japan by boat. She refuses to fly. Along the way
various things happen, such as the boat she is on is attacked by terrorists. However, this only happens towards the end.
Canal Dreams is a good book, but there is such a lot of detail in it that I wouldn't class it as a leisure book, but it might
appeal to some. It certainly isn't a horror book. There is a bit of action in it, and this is good, but all of the action is towards the end.
All of the science fiction books that I have read of Iain M. Banks (his sci-fi name) have been set in the Culture civilisation. So to help you
understand the reviews better, I felt it necessary to give you a little introduction to the Culture.
The Culture are a society that live in a vast area of space. The area they live in is astronomically huge, and contains as many planets, galaxies
and star systems as you care to imagine. The race is made up of people referred to so they seem like humans, but they are
never given this title. Also in this society 'live' robots, or as they are called, Drones.
These drones are sentient, that is they can think, and have 'personalities'. Each person has a drone, and the drone looks after
them and provides companionship. Drones can be the size of a coin, or can be bigger (the older drones). Apparently there have been
stories in the Culture of people going walking and leaving their drones at home (this is very rarely done), and then falling of a cliff. The
drones have got there in time to rescue the person.
In the Culture there is no money, and only one group of people work - the military. All the other work is done by drones. Everyone else has selected
somewhere to live, and gets on with their lives. Their lives are peculiar to us. People in the Culture live to six or seven hundred years old, and in
that time it is not uncommon for them to have changed their sex many times. This is done with drugs.
The Culture inhabitants have drugs for everything. They can change their sex, grow limbs with them, or use them to have a good time. Some
drugs (like those to change sex) are taken in the form of pills, while others (like those that allow them to have a good time) are produced in glands in their head. They
can alter their mood at random because of these drugs.
Another point about the Culture is that everything (apart from drones) is huge. Some of their starships are miles long and miles high. They have even built their own Orbitals to live on. The Vavatch orbital in Consider Phlebas is described as
"A fourteen-million kilometre hoop."They are big to say the least. On this orbital (before it was destroyed) were lots of ships called 'Megaships'. They never moored, they just kept sailing from landmass to landmass on Vavatch. People lived on these, and they were nicknamed floating cities.
Enough of the introduction though, and on with the books.
Consider Phlebas is set during the Culture-Idiran war. The Idirans are a race of creatures
who have three legs, and are about three metres tall. They have received a report that one of the Culture's 'Minds' (a very big and powerful drone) is on a planet. Both sides
want it, but getting it is difficult because it is on a planet declared neutral. It is a Planet of the Dead. If they use standard tactics of fighting for the planet, then they will be breaking
many treaties.
The Idirans get around this problem by employing a 'Changer' (yet another race, but a very small one) to work for them. Changer's, as their name suggests, can alter
their appearance. They do this just by thinking about what they want to look like, and after a few weeks, they begin to look like they wanted to. The Changer they employ is called Bora Horza Gobuchul, and he has worked on this planet before. It is maintained by Changer's.
Every ship in the Culture has a mind on it. They are very big, and weigh about a ton. They too are sentient, and the Idirans want it so they can learn the Culture's war tactics. The Culture want to prevent
this, so they use one of the only regiments that has people working for them - Special Circumstances (or Dirty Tricks as it was nicknamed by a former agent in 'A Gift from the Culture', from The State of the Art). This is the Culture's regiment that deals with tricky situations. The people that work for
them are special agents or brilliant stratagists. The person the Culture assign to get their mind back is an agent called Balveda. She has met Horza before, and he recognizes her despite the fact she has
taken drugs to alter her looks.
It takes Horza a long time to find the Planet of the Dead where the mind is because he has a lot of set-backs. For example the ship the Idirans brief him on gets attacked, and Horza is put into a spacesuit
and sent out into space so he isn't killed. After floating in space, he is picked up by a ship of mercenaries, and has to kill one of the crew for a place. This is just one problem; he then has to escape from
some cannibals before the orbital they are on is blown up.
Although it takes Horza a long time to reach his destination, it is not boring to read. There is such a lot of action along the way that it is impossible to put the book down. This book is expertly written, and
is a joy to read. Consider Phlebas has been so thoroughly thought out, and is so complete in every detail that it really is a delight, and I think that if you like science fiction you can't fail but to like this book.
The Player of Games is about a Culture games player called Jernau Morat Gurgeh. He is the master of every game in the Culture, whether they are strategy, computer or board games. Gurgeh is needed by Special Circumstances. They have made contact with a distant planet that they consider dangerous. They aren't dangerous militarily, but because of the way they live. I think his planet represents Earth, but it is never called this. Gurgeh is needed because they want him to win a very important game. The blurb describes it as:
"A game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor."
So Gurgeh goes to the Empire of Azad to play this game. At first, Gurgeh is treated with amazement, and wonder. He is afterall an alien.
But he is allowed to play Azad as an honourary player
because the Culture have told them how good he is. No-one expects him to do very well at it because of how complex the game is. Children in the Empire of Azad are taught the game all their lives, but Gurgeh only has the three or so years that
it takes to get there to learn and master the game. Obviously, no-one thinks he can possibly win. When he gets into the third round though, the people of Azad turn nasty. They don't like this alien beating them at their own game after just three years of playing. He is threatened,
and almost shot, but he doesn't leave the tournament until he has to. The Empire of Azad's current emperor allowed Gurgeh to play on the condition that he went out at the end of the fourth round.
The last few rounds take place on a 'Fire Planet'. There is a constant fire on this planet (hence the name), and the games are played in a castle that can withstand it. Although Gurgeh is only there to watch, events happen that make his stay interesting, so the story
is by no means over.
Although this is a good book, it is not quite as good as 'Consider Phlebas'. Despite this, it is still worth a read.