2 of 2

Write now Article Tools

A king of Sarl dies - seemingly in battle, but really by the hand of his right-hand man and friend. On of his sons runs away with his trusty servant to seek help from the representatives of civilisations so advanced that they are practically gods. A Special Circumstances agent, once the unruly princess and daughter of the king, on learning of his demise decides to get de-fanged and go back to a world which she thought she had left for good. The other son, for now Prince Regent, dodges several assassination attempts while personally supervising the discovery of a mysterious, unimaginably ancient and seemingly sentient artefact. Two of the most advanced civilisations in the Galaxy, the Morthanveld and The Culture, dance round each other trying to figure out why exactly one of the client cultures of Morthanveld created a phantom fleet of warships.

And all of the action seems to concentrate and point to the strange and fascinating artificial world of Sursamen, a so called Shellworld, a sphere comprising 14 levels of various habitats layered above a core inhabited by a creature called a WorldGod.

As usual, Banks spins his tale of galactic intrigue and Special Circumstances action with a panache and in a style that confirms his place at the very pinnacle of his genre. The characters are particularly well done this time, humane, interesting, and noticeably and naturally developing throughout the novel.

A lot of the action takes place in a primitive world of Sarl, living a quasi-feudal existence on one of the levels of Sursamen: and presents a convincing picture of how such a culture could function in a world where the most advanced civilisations attained practical immortality, faster than light travel and developed AI so advanced that spacesuits and missiles are technically more intelligent than humans.

With all its shameless space-operatic paraphernalia, socially it's a much more realistic picture and I couldn't stop making analogies to our own small world in which the technological distance between some of the poorest indigenous people in the world and the richest citizens of the most developed countries presents a similar contrast. But then, most of the sf is about here and now anyway.

The title hints at the philosophical implications touching on the basic onthology of the whole world, while the big moral themes of intervention, independence and what exactly it means to be a god (or a godlike civilisation) recurring in all Culture/Special Circumstances novels surface

• 1
• 2
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about Book reviews: Matter, by Iain M. Banks?
We want to hear your view. Write now!