Against a Dark Background - Iain M. Banks

I was introduced to Iain M Banks by a colleague of mine who leant me her copy of The Player Of Games. I loved that and after that I read Consider Phlebas.. that was 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 ... more

“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. This is a shame, as one of Banks’ strengths is that you never quite know what you’re going to get; on this occasion his originality has left him ... more

Meet the heroine, Sharrow. A feisty woman with an unusual background and a religious death threat hanging over her head. Banks, in my opinion, has really done himself proud in this departure from the culture series. Set in a competely different backgound (perhaps that explains the title) it follows Sharrow and her friends as they search for the last of the Lazy Guns. The Lazy Gun is the ultimate weapon capable of destroying black holes...should it so choose. The Lazy Gun is an alien artefact with a sense of humour (when it feels like it) that should it be tampered with will simply explode. A ... more

This is a mad book, Ulysees for the MTV generation. It is definitely his best, most inventive and most rewarding sci-fi. I love the culture books and it's wonderful the way they whisk you away to such a shiny, shiny world, but it's 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 ... more

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 the Huhsz hunters. The title of this book says it all: It is dark. The author is not afraid of shocking the reader. If you are one of those people who ... more