Against a Dark Background - Iain M. Banks

Advantages: Fantasticly creative and convincing
Disadvantages: Spoils you rotten

...in Feersum and also in Against a Dark Background that he creates the most interesting, gritty and bizarre futures. Feersum Endjinn is a tale told in the first person by a mixed bag of characters. An innocent guy with a talking ant for a pet and some developmental thing that makes him good at interfacing with the virtual world and very bad at spelling. He uses an onomatopoeic language all his own, with & for and, XXXXamples. It is hard to read at ...
...and once you do it seems to deepen the sense of this guy's world being real and very alien. A dead aristocrat. A funky scientist. A blank slate. Some nasty baddies. At first their stories seem unconnected but they entwine towards the revelatory finale I don't want to tell you anything about the plot because it is such a pleasure to read it. It does get confusing towards the end and I didn't get the full picture till I read it a second time, but that's ... Read review

Advantages: A non-Culture book from one of the very best of Sci Fi authors
Disadvantages: None really... unless you don't like science fiction!

...great too, but I adore Against A Dark Background! I had been getting used to the concept of the Culture and I enjoy the culture novels the best of all of them generally. However, it was good to read a non-culture book of his and Against A Dark Background has become my favourite so far... although Use of Weapons comes close! The story is based on Sharrow... a former member of a personally attuned combat team. She is also being hunted by the Huhsz, ...
...Lazy Guns. A weapon so powerful that they could destroy the world or worse! They blamed Sharrow for the destruction of the only other Lazy Gun in existence and are determined to not only kill Sharrow, but also to claim the final Lazy Gun for themselves. And so begins a roller coaster of a race to find the last Lazy Gun whilst also uncovering plots within plots. As with all Banks' books, it is very cleverly written and something new and unexpected ... Read review

Advantages: Very well-written
Disadvantages: A bit of deja vu

“Against A Dark Background” was the first of Iain Banks’ sf books not to be set in the Culture, and I found this an odd decision because there was little in the story that wouldn’t have fitted into the series. In fact the book is very similar to the previous novels. The main problem with the book is that it is overshadowed by its predecessor, “Use of Weapons”. “Against A Dark Background” deals with similar themes, and does it with far more panache. ...
...is that you never quite know what you’re going to get; on this occasion his originality has left him. Worse, the plot is too simple to be surprising, and the villain is rather obvious. It also becomes clear that Banks’ protagonist Sharrow, like Horza in “Consider Phlebas”, is a carrier for death - it’s obvious that everyone she touches will be dead by the end of the book, and the only mystery is whether she herself will survive. This doesn’t mean ... Read review

Advantages: Superb story, unmissable
Disadvantages: None.

Iain M Banks is an science fiction author who also pens non science fiction under the name Iain Banks. This book is not one of Banks' Culture novels, but is set in the far future on a world not like Earth. It concerns the story of an Female ex-army veteran who is being hunted by an extreme religious cult because of her ancestry. Her only hope of preventing execution is to find the last 'Lazy Gun' a supremely powerful weapon, and hand it over to ... Read review

Advantages: Twisted, black humour, very weird and very funny
Disadvantages: The twist isn't special, and it's not suitable for kids!

.... That would explain a lot of the disgust. These days, it probably doesn't seem so bad, although I'll leave that up to you to decide! Don't have nightmares! You can buy The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks on www.amazon.co.uk for £6.39. It is also available in Audiobook format, read by the brilliant Peter Capaldi, for £7.25 (also www.amazon.co.uk). Other works of fiction by Iain Banks include: Walking On Glass The Bridge Espedair Street Canal Dreams (I've read this too, it's not as good as The Wasp Factory) The Crow Road Complicity Whit And science fiction novels by Iain M. Banks include: Consider Phlebas The Player Of Games Use Of Weapons The State Of The Art Against A Dark Background Feersum Endjinn Excession... Read review

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