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 is the coolest space opera novel ever written. And just for a change, most of the usual Banks mayhem takes place in the middle, instead of the end.
I discovered Iain M. Banks with this book someone had left next to the bed in a fisherman's hotel my family and I were staying on the Lofoten Islands in Norway, hundreds of kilometers above the Arctic Circle. It was already quite a mystical experience being up there under the midnight sun. Reading the first few paragraphs I knew this was something special. Granted I was lost and confused for the first hundred pages, I even stopped reading it for a few months. When I picked it up again, I couldn't stop. I've caught the bug and now devoured four other of his sci-fi books. Like most of Banks' leading characters, Fassin Taak is a somber, reluctant, conflicted, lone kind of guy. Some readers might not find him personable enough and lose interest because of the lack of him being a clear cut hero, but in my opinion they're missing the point. What matters here is the vivid universe Banks is able to create, it's as violent, beautiful, and haunting as you could probably never imagine. And the beauty of it is that it's perfectly immersive. There is plenty of action, suspense, and escapism to satisfy the fan of the genre. Let's hope this is the beginning of a new series. Until then I'll catch up on Banks' equally satisfying if slightly less mystical Culture novels.
Fassin Taak is a Seer. A human who's job it is to delve into the heart of the gas giant Nasqueron and interact with the native alien species there...the Dwellers. The Dwellers are old. Their species having been around for something on the order of ten billion years. Add to this that individual Dwellers can live to be at least two billion and what you get is a species that has seen an awful lot. Fassin's job is to get as much information out of the Dwellers as possible. But the Dwellers are notoriously difficult to get information out of...at least information that is of any value.
Fassin has lived his entire life in the Ulubis system. Home to Nasqueron and its Dwellers as well as multiple worlds settled by various species...including humans. The Ulubis system is part of the Mercatoria, a socio-political structure that controls much of the galaxy.
Now Fassin must undertake a delve into the heart of Nasqueron in search of information that may be so valuable that it could shake the very foundations of the Mercatoria and galactic society.
The Algebraist was an intriguing tale. Banks does a wonderful job of sketching out the eccentricities of the Dwellers and their life in the gas giant Nasqueron. I wish Banks had given us even more, had further refined Dweller life...the most interesting parts of the book were when Banks did delve into "ordinary" Dweller life. Setting the book back some had to be Banks' prose...it was just too clunky and long-winded at times. The Algebraist is the first book I have read by Banks...I don't know if this cumbersome text is part of Banks' inimitable style or whether The Algebraist stands alone with this quality. The story also tended to be a bit slow in the first half, not really picking up until the second.
Overall however, The Algebraist was an enjoyable first jaunt into a Banks tale and was more than worthy to spur me onto to other stories written by this author in the future.
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.
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