Excession

Excession
by Iain Banks

Excession
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Book Summary Information

Author: Iain Banks
Edition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1998-02-02
ISBN: 0553575376
Number of pages: 512
Publisher: Spectra
Product features:

Book Reviews of Excession

Book Review: Thoroughly Impressive and Enjoyable
Summary: 5 Stars

Iain Bank's "Excession" is a masterful piece of science fiction. It's got everything a sci-fi lover could want: gigantic spaceships, hyperintelligent AI, space battles, conspiracy, romance, engaging aliens, a mysterious powerful artifact (the "Excession"); it's the Full Monty. There's a decent story, too, but the best part is the exuberant creativity that Banks brings to his world, "The Culture." This is a dense, detailed, fully realized world, bursting with amazing technology, social arrangements, history, and sentient creatures of all kinds. Almost every page holds a surprise. This is only the second Culture novel that I've read, but man, I am hooked!

My favorite part of the book is the communication between the artificial Minds that run the ships -- and the affairs of the Culture at large. The Ship Minds are like Olympian gods, powerful and intelligent beyond human comprehension, ancient, yet still capable of misjudgment and eccentricity, pettiness and compassion. They were far more compelling characters than the humans in the book.

If flaw there be, it would be the somewhat opaque espionage hi-jinks the humans go through. One of the main characters, Ulver Seich, seemed extraneous to the story. But those are minor quibbles. The book as a whole is fantastic, one of the best I've read in a while. Buckle up and enjoy the ride!

Summary of Excession

Iain M. Banks is a true original, an author whose brilliant speculative fiction has transported us into worlds of unbounded imagination and inimitable revelatory power. Now he takes us on the ultimate trip: to the edge of possibility and to the heart of a cosmic puzzle....

Diplomat Byr Genar-Hofoen has been selected by the Culture to undertake a delicate and dangerous mission. The Department of Special Circumstances--the Culture's espionage and dirty tricks section--has sent him off to investigate a 2,500-year-old mystery: the sudden disappearance of a star fifty times older than the universe itself. But in seeking the secret of the lost sun, Byr risks losing himself.

There is only one way to break the silence of millennia: steal the soul of the long-dead starship captain who first encountered the star, and convince her to be reborn. And in accepting this mission, Byr will be swept into a vast conspiracy that could lead the universe into an age of peace...or to the brink of annihilation.


It's not easy to disturb a mega-utopia as vast as the one Iain M. Banks has created in his popular Culture series, where life is devoted to fun and ultra-high-tech is de rigueur. But more than two millennia ago the appearance--and disappearance--of a star older than the universe caused quite a stir. Now the mystery is back, and the key to solving it lies in the mind of the person who witnessed the first disturbance 2,500 years ago. But she's dead, and getting her to cooperate may not be altogether easy.

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