Iain Banks led a duel life as a novelist. Firstly as a writer of emotive, warped and heartfelt narratives and also as Iain M Banks, a spinner of galactic science fiction writ large of millions of miles and millions of years. Although this book, by virtue of the chosen moniker should fit into the former category, the story seems to span both parts of his writing.
He presents his world through a series of first person views, from myriad characters; a legendary assassin, a city trader, a state sponsored torturer, an enigmatic philosopher and a seemingly comatose hospital patient, all tell the story from their experiences and often flitting through each others narratives. It is an interesting style, one that keeps you on your toes as a reader as your worldview changes perspective with each teller’s tale.
Together they paint a world, or series of parallel worlds, whose strings are pulled by an all powerful organisation called The Concern, an illuminate-esque body who bend society, history and destiny to their will, much like The Culture, his power behind the throne body ever present in his science fiction writing. Through this string of worlds, some familiar to us as slight tweaks on society as we know it, others alien and fantastic, a battle of cat and mouse is being played, one for the very control of the destiny of the universe.
As always his backdrop is sprawling and full of big ideas and bigger possibilities yet even at its most fantastic it has a consistency and logic that often eludes such fantastic premises. It is also a world so well realised that you feel if at any time you turn your back and walk away from the central narrative you would see a functioning world going about its business oblivious to the thread of the story.
The writing is baroque yet hyper-real and kinetic, it fizzles with energy and paints grand theories as if they were matter of fact thoughts and already familiar concepts and all the time the characters draw in on each other across worlds and time zones, from alternate pasts and possible futures towards one final apocalyptic encounter.
