Product Description

In a world renowned even within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a war. For one brother it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one - maybe two - people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, even without knowing the full truth, it means returning to a place she d thought abandoned forever.

Only the sister is not what she once was; Djan Seriy Anaplian has changed almost beyond recognition to become an agent of the Culture s Special Circumstances section, charged with high-level interference in civilisations throughout the greater galaxy.

Concealing her new identity - and her particular set of abilities - might be a dangerous strategy, however. In the world to which Anaplian returns, nothing is quite as it seems; and determining the appropriate level of interference in someone else's war is never a simple matter.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #940 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 544 pages

Review
'There is now no British SF writer to whose work I look forward with greater keenness' The Times 'Confirms Banks as the standard by which the rest of SF is judged' The Guardian 'Explosive' Sunday Times 'Gripping, touching and funny' T.L.S. 'A wild imagination' Mail on Sunday 'Captivating' Time Out 'Spectacular ... the field needs his energy' The Scotsman 'One of the very best just got even better' Starburst 'Banks is a phenomenon' William Gibson

GUARDIAN
'Sit back and listen to Toby Longworth's tongue-in-cheek reading of a very funny book'

About the Author
Iain Banks came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, THE WASP FACTORY, in 1984. He has since gained enormous popular and critical acclaim for both his mainstream and his science fiction novels.

Customer Reviews

Superb for a beginner to the series
Having never read a book in the Culture series before, I wasn't sure what to expect.

I was soon drawn into a fascinating world filled with devious, subtle and herioc characters. Then suddenly the scope of the book changes and we realise that the world that is being described is just one level, of a multi-leveled shellworld. Each level filled with bizarre and wonderful lifeforms. The shellworld itself is only a small part of an enormous and complicated Universe.

To those who found this book rather slow, I would say that it is a perfect book for a Culture beginner - the slightly slower pace at the beginning makes it truly breathtaking when the reader is taken into outside the familiar eighth level into a galaxy of intruige and spectacle.

If you have never read a Culture book before this is a perfect book. I was blown away by the breadth and complexity of Banks' imagination.

A book of two halves - but not cliché
For the first time in the Iain M. Banks Culture canon, I found myself more interested in the non-Culture, low-tech society existing within a high-tech, alien-built and controlled world. The Sursamen serf and turf-wars, power grabbing and palace intrigue is splendidly, richly and vividly written.
The various journeys, both metaphorically and literally of the main characters, with their speeches and inner thoughts are beautifully realised and realistically human-type-like.
It is almost with regret I found the Culture intervention approximately halfway through to be the start of a slight decline in the story-telling and imagination of the book. With such high-tech, invincibility (however close to final jeopardy they come in the end) it is almost, I repeat almost, a too rapid deus ex machina conclusion wrung from what seems to have been Banks' final threadbare cloth of boredom.
However, to give an example of the wonderful writing in the first half of Matter, how about this from the 2nd page :
'What sullen application these humans devoted to destruction' - Turminder Xuss.
Despite the criticism this is still wonderful stuff. Good science fiction and future imaginings rarely ever matched in the genre.
Just not quite as wonderful all the way through as previous favourites in the series. A pity for this reader and fan.

I'd give it 3.5 if I could
Not his best but a book that gradually improved with a better than average ending for Banks - something I feel he can struggle with.

I don't generally like it when he uses the fiction of old technologies cheek by jowl with The Culture for example but the characters were good and the action increasingly urgent......and I just like the whole concept of the Culture