Feersum Endjinn

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First edition hardcover: The Algebraist, Iain M. Banks, London: Orbit, 2004 ISBN 1-84149-155-1 (UK) This is good. It is as intelligent as the more contemporary 'The Bridge' (which so far is still my favorite novel coming from Iain Banks that I have yet read - I am still wading through his books), it is not set in the Culture series, but as a stand alone sci-fi novel with a very unique aspect about it, just as all his novels contain. However, my main misgiving (which also stopped me reading the book the first time I attempted it several years ago) was the phonetically written sections by a character called Bascule. However, this attempt of re-reading was a success, and whilst most would be put off from the 'text-speech' at first, it does become easier as the book progresses and you get used to it. It took me a while mind, but the character who speaks in this manner also has a comedic value too. Give it time and you get used to it, but it does make the novel slower to read. We all have reasons to love Feersum Endjinn, reasons that are often very personal and very subjective. My own is: dyslexia for the win! (... In case anyone wonders, yes, it's a very personal and very subjective reason) Feersum Endjinn is the only scifi novel I have ever read with a dyslexic main character. Bascule writes as a dyslexic person without complexes writes. Oh yes, it makes for a challenging read (particularly if English isn't your first language and/or if you have yourself some dyslexia symptoms), on the other hand it will feel so liberating to any dyslexic person. But, it is also very daring and only a writer as confident and established as Banks could try something like that. Nonetheless it's more than just a writing exercise: it makes Bascule's voice truly his own. I think the most important aspect of Banks’ storytelling was his tight grip on the differences between theme and setting. Something that is not as common among science fiction writers as you might think. Cyberpunk stories are primarily known for two things: 1. Themes of isolation, paranoia, and self-identity in an oppressive world grown out of control. 2. A dirty, high-tech setting full of seedy characters. The themes of Feersum Endjinn are cyberpunk through and through, but the setting—even in the entirely virtual Crypt—is much closer to that of epic fantasy. After all, it wouldn’t be a Banks novel if genre tropes and conventions weren’t completely turned on their side. Splitting cyberpunk themes from their usual counterpart setting, shows a terrific understanding of the genre and the unique power of the differing storytelling tools available to writers.

Feersum Endjinn: An eclectic far-future science fantasy

The Algebraist is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, published in print in 2004. It was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2005. [1] I -- don't know what to think. This one will have to sit and be turned over in the mental thought-bank for a while: the difficulties of following the narrative through POV changes and the phonetically written sections made it fragment in my mind, despite me reading it at my usual tremendous pace. I think I liked it a lot: I certainly liked the concept of the world, anyway, though on reflection I don't give much a monkey's about most of the characters.

I [ ] had the idea that what virtual reality would become eventually would start to resemble myth and legend.” But don't just think this is just a novel of ideas. The characters and the individual stories were all fascinating and funny and full of great reveals and twists. More than enough for three normal novels, even. :) Anoche lo terminé después de haberlo estado leyendo por, literalmente, años para darle una oportunidad. No hay caso. No me gustó nada. At one end of the vast C bitten from the castle a single great bastion-tower stood, almost intact, five kilometres high, and casting a kilometre-wide shadow across the rumpled ground in front of the convoy. The walls had tumbled down around the tower, vanishing completely on one side and leaving only a ridge of fractured material barely five hundred metres high on the other. The plant-mass babilia, unique to the fastness and ubiquitous within it, coated all but the smoothest of vertical surfaces with tumescent hanging forests of lime-green, royal blue and pale, rusty orange; only the heights of scarred wall closest to the more actively venting fissures and fumaroles remained untouched by the tenacious vegetation.

Feersum Endjinn (7th+ time) Reading: Iain M. Banks — Feersum Endjinn (7th+ time)

She was the only speaker in a tribe of the dumb, walking amongst them, tall and silent while they touched her and beseeched her with their sad eyes and their deferent, hesitant hands and their flowing, pleading signs to talk for them, sing for them, be their voice.” Sometimes a book has so many incredible elements that it defies easy summary. Compound that with the fact that it shares themes with some of your favorite genre classics, and that it is written by the incredibly-talented Iain M. Banks, and you have the recipe for a very unique reading experience. As I read the story, I was forcibly reminded of some classic books in the genre, particularly Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and the Stars , Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker , Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast , and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash , Diamond Age , and Anathem . My favorite moment in Feersum Endjinn is a beautifully written chapter in which a character is psychologically manipulated through a series of increasingly elaborate digital environments designed to make it easy and even preferable for her to divulge the information her interrogators are attempting to extract. The section takes place entirely inside the virtual construct of the Crypt, and on its own makes little sense without the context provided in previous chapters. The way in which these scenarios are presented to the reader is a thing to behold. This is the time of the encroachment and everything is about to change. Although the dimming sun still shines on the vast, towering walls of Serehfa Fastness, the end is close at hand. The King knows it, his closest advisers know it, and the crypt knows it too; so an emissary has been sent – an emissary who holds the key to all their futures. Which would be a real shame because this novel is a real shining star of creativity. It reads like a fantasy adventure and mystery while having all the great trappings of a heavy SF dive. :)One of very few of Banksy’s books that I haven’t read multiple times. When I read a suggestion on Goodreads that I should try an audiobook for the phonetic chapters that proved very helpful.