Excession - Iain M. Banks

...be classed as science fiction. Excession is one of Banks’ later science fiction novels, for this reason you would need to have read some of his earlier works as the book is quite complicated. Excession assumes the reader already knows about certain concepts and ideas that Banks has dreamed up. For this reason I can’t recommend reading Excession unless you have read some of the earlier sci-fi novels such as Consider Phlebas or The Player of Games ...
...One of the main reasons Excession is such a complicated book is because of the fact that the overall story is made up of smaller stories which at first you do not think are related. The smaller stories eventually all become intertwined as the book progresses. The main feature in Excession is a strange artefact that has appeared in space, the artefact is in the form of a mysterious black sphere orbiting around an ancient sun. The Culture Minds have ...

gorvifal3 24.04.2003 · Read full review
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Review of Excession - Iain M. Banks

...of his books: Consider Phelebas, Excession and The Business. The first two are sci-fi and the second in the vein of Michael Crichton. I’m writing about the first two; more specifically about the setting they’re in and why I think it’s a work of near-genius. Consider Phelebas & Excession are set in what IMB calls the Culture Universe. Before I attempt to explain this, I’d like to point out to those of you might go off and ...
...C Clarkes in that he often introduces concepts, events and references that aren’t immediately followed by an explanation – this happens further down the line. Whilst this often requires a swift re-reading of the previous occurances to fully get what happened, bear with it – its worth the confusion. The Culture is very hard to describe. It could be in the future or in the distant past. Although he describes human beings in it, the ...

Andrew19111 16.08.2001 · Read full review
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Review of Excession - Iain M. Banks

...basis of a plot. Excession is largely the story of machines. As Banks admits early on, the Minds occasionally “forgot to tell everybody else about finding entire stellar civilisations, or took it upon themselves to alter the course of a developed culture”. Such a conspiracy forms the real meat of the plot of Excession, as a rogue group uses the appearance of an inexplicable object (and you know from page 1 that it will remain inexplicable) as an ...
...badly. Excession is a storming addition to the Culture lore, with two caveats. It suffers from Banks’ frequent problem that half the book doesn’t have much to do with the other half; and anyone who hasn’t read the previous books won’t understand a word of it. ...

NeilHudson 12.08.2000 · Read full review
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Review of Excession - Iain M. Banks

Anyone who believes this book is nonsense needs their head examining. This has to be one of the most truly original books I have ever read. Most of the dialogue is conducted between enormous sentient spacecraft which are thousands of light years away from each other. I'll admit it can be hard going at times but it's certainly worth it in the end. Amongst other insights, you are let in on the ambitions of these sentient craft who in their spare time ...

chrissimpson 31.07.2000 · Read full review
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Review of Excession - Iain M. Banks

This book is a part of Iain Bank's series of "Culture" novels, it's a look at a future society run by Minds, super intelligent AI's that run all the stations and ships that make up a vast interstellar group. The novel starts with the apperance of a strange anomaly in a remote reigion of space and then follows the actions of both the Minds and the citizens of various races as they react to this stimuli. The book is complicated and involving to read, ...
...find this a welcome challenge that adds to the joy of reading the book, but others are warned that this might not be to their tastes. In common with most of the Culture novels, the plot is wonderful in its exacting detail and the characters are always fresh and intruiging in their interations. For those with the mental agility to handle to complicated weaving of storylines this is a novel not to be missed... ...

Fearghul 18.03.2005 · Read full review
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Review of Excession - Iain M. Banks

...spirit of the Culture. Excession moves along at a great pace, blink and you'll miss the details, which makes speed-reading it almost impossible, but since it is so compelling, the temptation is to rush through just to see what happens. This led to me reading it cover-to-cover four times before I really got to grips with every detail. I kid you not : it is a complex story with great plot twists. In summary, a must-have for Iain M. Banks fans, but ...

LeckyT 12.06.2003 · Read full review
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Review of Excession - Iain M. Banks

...Culture citizens. Excession concerns the appearance in the culture novel of an all powerful artifact, and the consequences of its arrival on the Culture universe. This book is hard to put down but it helps if you have read some of the other Culture novels first ...

markos3 24.08.2000 · Read full review
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Review of Excession - Iain M. Banks

Takes you into a whole new area of the Culture, where the AI minds discuss the problems that are occuring since the presence of an unidentified object. It is riddled with Banks' usual wit, imagination and depth. This gives many insights into areas of the Culture I'd not wondered about before. The is much intrigue with many twists along the way. This was book I'd heard many goods things said about it, and was not disappointed. You've heard books ...

TheZigStar 15.12.2005 · Read full review
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Review of Excession - Iain M. Banks

...fan of Banks and as Excession was the first book I read of his it's not likely that I ever will become a fan. How this was called Science Fiction I don't know because it contained little of either. The ships talking to each other in there own language is hard to comprehend (as a long time reader of SF I consider myself reasonably intelligent) and in the story very little happens and just as they are about to discover the main plot device a space ...

dom00 17.07.2000 · Read full review
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Review of Excession - Iain M. Banks