Excession
by Iain M. Banks
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Book Reviews of Excession
Book Review: SO WHAT?
Summary: 3 Stars
If someone were to write a science fiction novel in which the mutants invaded the earth and then just went away again I suspect most of us would feel slightly disappointed. Elevate the theme to a super-galactic scale and have a mysterious dark star and a similar satellite putting in an appearance sufficient to give proof of terrifying power and then just have them disappear again likewise leaves me feeling uncertain that 450 pages were worth the trouble of wading through.
It needs no saying that Iain (M) Banks is exceptionally gifted both as a novelist and as a writer. He can keep a huge cast of characters and an enormous complex of sub-plots under control, and the quality of the narrative and the dialogue is never less than highly proficient and professional. All the same, I have an uneasy feeling that this great doorstopper of a book is a bit of a pot-boiler. Space-opera is such a familiar genre by now that any author, however talented, has to tread warily to avoid self-parody. Right from the first few pages I sensed the better and the not-so-good sides of this novel. The first theme of the artificial planet and the lonely lady in her tower by the sea seemed very effective if hardly new or original, but Banks also seemed rather stuck for a way to achieve distinctiveness in the writing. An effective style at the start is always a problem for novelists, and their `solution' is often, as here, a bit of Fine Writing. The trouble with Fine Writing is that it can easily become ridiculous, and I found myself trying to repress my giggles here. The vocabulary is affected and precious, and the larding of hyphenated words made me want to turn it into something like Swinburne, such as
They were steady, the waves, as they broke on the grey-slope,
Hollow grey-slope of shingle that bordered the flood;
And they beat on the shattered up-ground carapaces
And the light-blighted sea-wrack and water-smoothed wood
and similar rubbish.
However I ploughed on eagerly, and I was treated to a familiar repast. Three civilisations, two of them humanoid the other a race of hearty tentacled monsters with a penchant for blood sports, coexist in an uneasy and easily upset peace. Their battle-fleets rush to and fro at speeds outpacing mere light, and the physics underlying such prodigies is explained in the familiar vocabulary of hokum, e.g. `It de-coupled its engine fields from the energy grid and plunged those vortices of pure energy deep into the fabric of its own Mind'. By the third millennium I must say I expect a bit more effort from a science-fiction author than that. There are of course also love interests and sexual encounters, and these I found to be of quite ineffable tedium. Sentient and intelligent machines, spaceships, satellites, drones and whatnot abound too, and the whole effect on me was of a generous but rather dull and predictable meal - more of the usual, better served up no doubt but rather routine fare for all that.
It may simply be that I have read too much of this kind of thing, and certainly it was only the name of Banks that decided me to read this. Younger readers and those whose appetite for it is still fresh may well find it more interesting than I did. Right to the end I was looking for some real touch of originality or vision, something to make the book distinctive, but all I found was competence. That's at least something, I suppose.
Book Review: A book that promises much, but dosen't quite make it.
Summary: 3 Stars
Before you begin reading this book flip to the back and find the epilogue. Grip the page firmly and tear the bastard out. This will significantly improve the book. When I finished the epilogue I nearly through the entire book in the fire. It's hard to believe a single page can turn a silk purse into a sow's ear, but Iain manages it. The prologue isn't as bad as the epilogue. It's merely a cure for insomnia rather than annoying. When I was half way through the prologue I was tempted to put the book away and get something more interesting. I forced myself to continue as Iain has had numerous successful books and 'Excession' won the British SF award. There had to be something more to it then the drivel I was reading.
Once you've waded through the prologue and start the book proper it become less tedious, unfortunately it becomes almost unbearably pretentious. Pages are wasted with totally irrelevant symbols and meaningless strings of numbers. It seems once you've made a name for yourself you can indulge any little vanity you want and still get it published. Fortunately in the latter part of the book even Iain seems to have got sick of the attack of pretension he begins with.
The story itself is interesting and imaginatively written, but because of the tedious prologue, pretentious writing affectation and hackneyed epilogue I can't give it more then three stars and was tempted to give it two stars. If this is a fair example of Iain's work I won't be racing out to read his others.
Now that I've finished bitching about the book I'll give you a bit of a run down of what happens, in case you want to inflict it upon yourself.
There is this thing called the Excession that just turns up one day. It is clearly an alien object of some sort with more advanced technology then the other members of the 'Culture' (This is not the first Culture novel).
Everybody wants to find it (it keeps zipping around to annoy people) and take it over. To this end various groups hatch plots. The ship minds want it, the humans want it, and the Affronter want it. There are subgroups and plotters within each of these groups as well. And apart from everyone wanting it they also want to stop everyone else from getting it. as you can imagine this makes for an excessively complicated plot.
Iain follows all the threads he begins logically and intelligently, and then draws them all together at the climax. If it wasn't for the beginning, the end and the pretension, all off which could be deleted without affecting the story, then it'd be a four star book.
Book Review: 10 pages of story spread over 500 pages of filler
Summary: 1 Stars
Mr. Banks can write a sentence, there's no doubt about that, but he now seems to be enamored with his own prose and has forgotten his role as a storyteller. "Excession" had a decent story concept worth about 10 pages in a short story but Mr. Banks spun that up to nearly 500 pages of extraneous materials, forgettable characters, mindless scenes and general relativistic nonsense. What a joke this is. His admirers must have a lot more time and much lower expectations for what constitutes a good novel. I get the impression that Mr. Banks is now just churning out these long winded excursions in his personal universe of created worlds and races to fill a bookshelf, cash a check, fulfill a contract.
I picked up "Excession" to read on a couple of long plane rides. The jacket comments were interesting (aren't they always). The book started okay - the descriptions apt, the interest high, but it didn't take long for the tenuous story to get bogged down in meaningless chatter and strange side stories. I hung with it and then set it aside. Frustrated, with nothing else to read or do on the plane, I begrudgingly took the book up again and again getting more and more angry with this bloated author. Every once in awhile he would return to his original concept and things would briefly focus but before long he was off again, lost in his own personal reveries of other ideas from other times. It felt like a potpourri of old, dead end ideas for books he never wrote. What a waste of time and paper! Understand, I read a lot of books and I can read fast. I love hard sci fi and I can nail a book in a couple of sittings. I enjoy speculatice ideas and new points of view but I demand a story to hold together and drive the narrative. This is garbage - pure and simple.
It is extremely rare for me to not finish a book - even one I don't particularly care for. At the very least, if the starting concept intrigued me I will jump to the last few chapters to at least see how it resolved. Not so in this case. I was so put off and angry about this highly praised but tedious and empty book that I stopped where I was (more than halfway) closed it and made sure to stick it deep into the nearest airport trash bin when I exited my plane at the destination. I sincerely hope no one filched it from the trash and squandered their time trying to read it. I hope if you read this review you would, by all means, avoid buying it!
Book Review: Good, but you'll work for it
Summary: 5 Stars
Most Iain Banks books are challenging reads, it's a credit to the man that he refuses to write down because he's penning SF novels and not the higher profile "literary" stuff that most of the mainstream probably recognizes him for (is he well read in this country, nobody I know has heard of him . . . what's with that?) so what you basically get with the Culture novels is SF from someone who really knows how to write and doesn't just have a degree and feels the need to share this nifty cool idea he had the other day. This book is full of cool ideas but more importantly it's a dense and slightly elusive work . . . while it's not opaque stuff isn't spelled out explicitly for the reader, there are a lot of dots to connect here. The setup is a large object has appeared from literally nowhere and interacts with the energy grip in a way that is supposed to be impossible. But this isn't the first time this object appeared and the only person who is around from that last appearance is Stored in a ship and has to be convinced to come out. That's how the plot starts. Where it ends is somewhere totally different and if sometimes you think you're reading a totally different book, that's just par for the course with Banks. The focus this time around is more on the Minds in the ships, which is good and bad. The Minds are basically human and their rapid fire conversations that take up a large chunk of the book are highly entertaining . . . however it can be daunting for readers unable to keep track of the dozens of names, especially with little strong personality to back up the Mind and make an impression. You may wish for a recap box at some point to make sure you're still up to speed. Still astute readers are rewarded with a plot that twists almost dizzingly . . . I've read a few Banks books by now and he still amazes how he manages to turn everything upside down so quickly. The action is good, the dialogue between ships crackles, the plot is mind bending and the last page deserves to be read over and over again. I can't say this is his best work, but like all his other stuff the quality is high and if new readers have the stamina, they'll find themselves pleasantly delighted.Book Review: Irony, Affrontery and Iain Banks
Summary: 5 Stars
Reading your first Iain Banks novel is like nothing else in literature. It's a little like being in the washing machine on spin cycle. You emerge dizzy but refreshed. Machine gun pacing, vivid characterization, universe-spanning cultures and, of course, The Culture. Smug, self-satisfied, hedonistic and vain, The Culture is also bifurcated between more-or-less humankind and Minds, advanced AI's that are not always tolerant of their "meat-based" co-citizens.More than any other novel of The Culture, this one involves those Minds and, without spoilers, they turn out to be human, all too human. Banks handles very well the problem of writing dialog for beings who are far, far more intelligent and think millions of times faster than we do. As others have noted, it sometimes makes for dense reading, but it is very believable. In some ways, this is a novel about the psychology and motives of Minds.
As always, Banks laces the story with sly humor, word play and wholly believable aliens. The Affront, the most conspicuous aliens in this tale, are a wonderful invention. As always, the structure of the novel itself with its interlacing of different story lines and physical organization is a part of the story itself, although less obviously so than in the earlier _Consider Phlebas_.
The Excession of the title is the focus of the attention of most of the characters in the story, but Banks is far too gifted a writer to make it the whole story. Readers who complain about the ending may be missing Banks' most important point. Perhaps the story isn't so much about the Excession, but how the characters react to the Excession. And maybe the ending is Banks' way of underscoring that point.
As always with Banks' stories of The Culture, there is moral ambiguity and it's impossible to tell the good guys from the bad guys. For my taste, that's a lot more "real" than the moral absolutes of space operas in the tradition of E.E. "Doc" Smith.
An excellent, rollicking adventure, full of surprises, laughs and sly irony. Densely written but highly readable. Much more mature than earlier Culture novels. Highly recommended.