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The Algebraist |
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The Algebraist
It is 4034 AD. Humanity has made it to the stars. Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year. The Nasqueron Dwellers inhabit a gas giant on the outskirts of the galaxy, in a system awaiting its wormhole connection to the rest of civilization. In the meantime, they are dismissed as decadents living in a state of highly developed barbarism, hoarding data without order, hunting their own young and fighting pointless formal wars. Seconded to a military-religious order he's barely heard of - part of the baroque hierarchy of the Mercatoria, the latest galactic hegemony - Fassin Taak has to travel again amongst the Dwellers. He is in search of a secret hidden for half a billion years. But with each day that passes a war draws closer - a war that threatens to overwhelm everything and everyone he's ever known.
The Algebraist Accessories
The Algebraist Reviews
This book is almost perfect. The writing is is crisp and descriptive. The story unique one for a (very) well-trodden field. The protagonist someone easy to identify with. The issue, finding the algebraic equation that unlocks a mystery held secret for 8 billion years, is very appealing.
The ending ... well, the ending doesn't match the promise of the setup, I'm afraid. Too easy, too predictable ... unfortunate. However, the book still gets 5 stars from me on basis of everything else.
A distant future anthropologist whose studies inadvertently uncover the clues to saving his star system from invasion becomes wrapped up in the search for a miracle, encountering numerous alien cultures and social-political interests along the way. Although the book falters a bit in the early pages by establishing additional unecessary storylines, it eventually settles into a satisfying mix of action and humor, with some fairly original ideas about intelligent life in the universe and possible futures for human kind. Some great revelations throughout, with a truly evil nemesis in the Archimanderite Luseferous (what a name).
Banks has a lighter, funnier tone with dialogue that others in the genre (Hamilton, Vinge, Reynolds) that may seem a bit to modern-day, but actually works quite well within the other far-distant future themes.
I found the Algebraist very hard to put down, with some very interesting twists at the end of the book.
I'm not entirely sure what a space opera is supposed to be. If this book represents the ideal then I'll never read another one. The story was a combination of insteresting elements interwined with numbing plot lines which either went nowhere or left me completely unfulfilled. If this was intentionally part of a sequential interlinked series, then I could perhaps understand the way some of it was presented. I don't believe that's the case, though. I don't mind a slow build to a story, but this was like a series of slow builds, and some of them never finished building. I don't find myself inclined to read anymore by this author on the basis of this experience.
This was my introduction to Iain M. Banks. It was a good choice. It took some effort to get going, but in the end it paid off. I now own all but one of his sci-fi books and will have the last as well. And I'm reading his non-scifi works too. You have to search hard to find all the books, but you'll get good tips at the fansite dedicated to Banks' work.
I have to agree with one of the earlier comments, the race on the edge of the eye of the hurricane on the gas giant was brilliant! And when the Dwellers finally brought out the big guns that ended one battle, I was laughing out loud! This is how science fiction should be written. Buy it. Many consider Banks to be one of Great Britain's top writers, and there is no question in my mind they are correct.
The Algebraist
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