Inversions (Culture) - Softcover

Banks, Iain M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1857237633 ISBN 13: 9781857237634

Publisher: Orbit, 1999

Synopsis

The sixth Culture book from the awesome imagination of Iain M. Banks, a modern master of science fiction.

In the winter palace, the King's new physician has more enemies than she at first realises. But then she also has more remedies to hand than those who wish her ill can know about.

In another palace across the mountains, in the service of the regicidal Protector General, the chief bodyguard, too, has his enemies. But his enemies strike more swiftly, and his means of combating them are more traditional.

Spiralling round a central core of secrecy, deceit, love and betrayal, INVERSIONS is a spectacular work of science fiction, brilliantly told and wildly imaginative, from an author who has set genre fiction alight.

Praise for the Culture series:

'Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution' Independent on Sunday

'Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future' Guardian

'Jam-packed with extraordinary invention' Scotsman

'Compulsive reading' Sunday Telegraph

The Culture series:
Consider Phlebas
The Player of Games
Use of Weapons
The State of the Art
Excession
Inversions
Look to Windward
Matter
Surface Detail
The Hydrogen Sonata

Other books by Iain M. Banks:
Against a Dark Background
Feersum Endjinn
The Algebraist

About this title

Review:

Science fiction readers know that Iain Banks writes "respectable" novels (such as The Wasp Factory) while his alter ego Iain M. Banks produces equally well-written but often more playful sci-fi--most famously, the gaudy and galaxy-spanning Culture series. In Inversions, Banks is being tricky again. Besides extra moons in the sky and stories of devastating meteor showers that toppled a former Empire, this novel's squalid, pre-industrial world seems to have no sci-fi elements. The two entwined stories feature a woman who becomes personal physician to one kingdom's absolute monarch, and the male bodyguard of a rival and more "progressive" country's Cromwell-like Protector. Both protagonists are mysterious outsiders from farther away than the King or Protector can ever imagine. Readers of Banks's other science fiction will spot the clues to their origins. Others may be slightly puzzled, especially by a seeming miracle which intervenes when the doctor faces torture--but can still enjoy the elegant narrative reversals, reflections and echoes. There are also generous helpings of blood, violence, poisoning, ingenious deceits and high excitement, spiced with political philosophy. Banks continues his pleasant habit of never repeating himself. --David Langford

Review:

A fantastic, awe-inspiring book ... I can't imagine anyone not being won over by this deeply entertaining, thought-provoking and humane story (EXPRESS)

Taut, hilarious and wicked (MAIL ON SUNDAY)

Compulsive Banksian reading ... thoughtful, intelligently bloody stuff (SFX)

Captivating ... incisive ... as sublime as ever (TIME OUT)

About this edition

• Publisher: Orbit
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1857237633
• ISBN 13: 9781857237634
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416