Algebraic review
Sep. 22nd, 2007 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHi,
So I just finishd up The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks.
Me and Banks have had a thing. I really enjoy his Culture books right up until the end when he seems to have all his characters come over nihilistic and do themselves in or die from unremitting despair or something. LUckily, this is most emphatically not a CUlture novel. For one thing, AIs are illegal and visiously hunted down when they crop up. There's still a star-spanning collective, the Mercatoria, which appears to be a mish-mash of alien cultures. It's not the sole superpower in the galaxy and indeed after the wormhole network that connects star systems goes down (again -- this happens with distrubing regularity), there are other groups out there poking around.
This particular story focuses on Fassin Taak -- he's a scientist who studies the Dwellers. The Dwellers are a race of gas-planet creatures that have been in existence for many billions of years. In any system with a gas giant, you'll probably find some Dwellers. As the oldest sentient species in the galaxy, they're incredibly insufferable and generally don't have much to do with anyone else -- especially those species who's lives are measured in centuries and not epochs like theirs are. So Taak takes a specially equipped ship down into the local gas giant and studies the Dwellers while they study him.
He soon receives a message telling him that his planet is about to be invaded by the dictator of a pocket empire. Ordinarily, no one would bother attacking the remote system he lives in, except that Fassin has inadvertently stumbled upon a mythical, legendary piece of information which could change the balance of power in the galaxy. Fassin is ordered back into the gas giant to try and recover the rest of this information from the Dwellers and get it back to the Mercatoria before the invaders get their hands on it.
So the bulk of the story is Fassin bumming around the gas giant, talking to various Dwellers and trying to unravel the mystery that will lead to the Holy Grail. The mystery is...a bit flat. The solution was one of two that I'd considered most likely as I was reading it, but it was obscured fairly well. Overall, the story itself was a lot of fun. The main characters were well-drawn and there was some great dialogue. The usual intersting places and beings you'd expect from Banks.
And the whole thing doesn't completely slide off the rails at the end. There's one point mid-way where the trials of Job are piled on you're pretty sure he's about to lose it and then it settles down again. Also, at the very end, one side plot resolves itself in the usual Bank's way, but it was such a side plot that I'm pretty sure the only reason it was in the book was so that Banks could have someone off themselves. Frankly, it's a much more hopeful and optimistic book all the way around and I'm rather glad I picked it up.
later
Tom
So I just finishd up The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks.
Me and Banks have had a thing. I really enjoy his Culture books right up until the end when he seems to have all his characters come over nihilistic and do themselves in or die from unremitting despair or something. LUckily, this is most emphatically not a CUlture novel. For one thing, AIs are illegal and visiously hunted down when they crop up. There's still a star-spanning collective, the Mercatoria, which appears to be a mish-mash of alien cultures. It's not the sole superpower in the galaxy and indeed after the wormhole network that connects star systems goes down (again -- this happens with distrubing regularity), there are other groups out there poking around.
This particular story focuses on Fassin Taak -- he's a scientist who studies the Dwellers. The Dwellers are a race of gas-planet creatures that have been in existence for many billions of years. In any system with a gas giant, you'll probably find some Dwellers. As the oldest sentient species in the galaxy, they're incredibly insufferable and generally don't have much to do with anyone else -- especially those species who's lives are measured in centuries and not epochs like theirs are. So Taak takes a specially equipped ship down into the local gas giant and studies the Dwellers while they study him.
He soon receives a message telling him that his planet is about to be invaded by the dictator of a pocket empire. Ordinarily, no one would bother attacking the remote system he lives in, except that Fassin has inadvertently stumbled upon a mythical, legendary piece of information which could change the balance of power in the galaxy. Fassin is ordered back into the gas giant to try and recover the rest of this information from the Dwellers and get it back to the Mercatoria before the invaders get their hands on it.
So the bulk of the story is Fassin bumming around the gas giant, talking to various Dwellers and trying to unravel the mystery that will lead to the Holy Grail. The mystery is...a bit flat. The solution was one of two that I'd considered most likely as I was reading it, but it was obscured fairly well. Overall, the story itself was a lot of fun. The main characters were well-drawn and there was some great dialogue. The usual intersting places and beings you'd expect from Banks.
And the whole thing doesn't completely slide off the rails at the end. There's one point mid-way where the trials of Job are piled on you're pretty sure he's about to lose it and then it settles down again. Also, at the very end, one side plot resolves itself in the usual Bank's way, but it was such a side plot that I'm pretty sure the only reason it was in the book was so that Banks could have someone off themselves. Frankly, it's a much more hopeful and optimistic book all the way around and I'm rather glad I picked it up.
later
Tom
