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: #28624 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 544 pages

Customer Reviews

A book of two halves
I would agree with those who have said that this one's slow (by Banks' standards) until the last couple of hundred pages (when it focuses more fully on the Culture's involvement in the plot) in which it absolutely zips by. In the first section of the book, detailing the goings on on the Eighth level of the Shellworld, we have to make do with short interludes and the descriptions of the Shellworlds themselves for our dose of Hard Sci-Fi - the rest of it is all a bit 'swords and chainmail'.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a decent read, but Banks' Sci-Fi will always, for me, be marked against his very best Culture work, and against those standards it falls a bit short, hence only three stars.

Not the new Culture novel
Nobody does sci-fi opera better than Iain M. Banks, and nobody denies that having the wit and imagination to conceptualise it is a difficult trick to pull off successfully. But on the strength of this under-powered outing, Banks may be losing his sci-fi crown.

Many people will buy into this book because the marketing people have billed it as the "new Culture novel', but the Culture's role is only coincidental through one of the characters.

The actual story is one of Bank's weakest, with most of the action set in a steam-powered quasi-medieval world of swords and armour, a long way from the techno-gadgetry of the Culture. Things get off to a quick start with the murder of a genocidal king by his henchman of 30 years. The next 400 pages grind past in tedium as the characters are slowly brought together, presumably to bear on the usurper tyl Loesp.

Mid-way through I started wondering why the reader or an ultra advanced civilisation like the Culture should care about the murder of a genocidal and parochial king, his 3 surviving bastard children, and their attempts to claim back the throne. The answer is I shouldn't have cared - the author seems to lose interest and hurries to kill off the book with a sacrificial ending that comes out of a nowhere and has nothing to do with the rest of the story.

If you're a fan of the Culture series, give Matter a miss and wait for the next 'proper' Culture novel.

A wasted opportunity
This book holds such promise. The Sarl are manipulated by the Oct, who in turn are manipulated by the Nariscene, who it turn dance to the tune of the Morthanveld. The Culture are (reasonably) peripheral plays in this complex dance, or so it seems.
The reader's mind starts to buzz with the possibilities (remember Use of Weapons!). Who works for who? Who is being double, treble, or even quadruple-crossed??
Unfortunately it all comes crashing down, like Banks (or the editors) got bored, and everything gets tied up in a trite and unsatisfying way.
Damn.