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From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Library Journal
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic,
By
This review is from: Inversions (Mass Market Paperback)
Wonderful wonderful wonderful. Iain Banks has to be one of the best sci-fi authors at this time. I would not suggest reading this as your first 'Culture' novel (try 'Player of Games' or 'Look to Windward') but this is a fantastically refreshing attempt at dealing with the other side (or the recieving end) of the Cultures main pre-occupation - how to deal with developing worlds and civilizations.Its also a love story and a classic romp in a pseudo-medieval setting.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Rare Dull Banks Book,
By A Customer
This review is from: Inversions (Mass Market Paperback)
Iain Banks's SF books are dense with astonishingly imaginative settings, well filled-out characters and rapid, complex plotting. Inversions has none of these virtues. It is long, ponderous, and dull. The events are slow and predictable. The characters, flat and with the exception of the two protagonists, nearly indistinguishable. The two protagonists are humorless stand-ins for competing opinions about the proper behavior of members of an advanced civilization toward members of a less advanced civilization. There may be a good book possible from this premise but it would need more disciplined and editing than this one shows. I hope that Banks has not become so successful that he thinks that anything he writes is gold and his editors agree. If so, and this book is an example of the result, we may have seen the last of the Banks magic. I will miss that magic but life is too short to slog through books like this in hopes of finding it.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A puzzle wrapped in an enigma.,
By rachel@ilhawaii.net (Hilo, Hawaii, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Inversions (Mass Market Paperback)
I liked this novel for its richness of plot and mystery. For anyone familiar with Banks' Culture novel, it will be obvious that the two protagonists are from the Culture. They have a disagreement as cousins growing up together about whether pre-contact civilizations should be left alone or should be meddled with so that they find the true path out of the scarcity stage of planetary evolution. So the cousins decide to put it to the test. The female becomes a doctor to a king and manipulates him into egalitarian beliefs while the male becomes the protector to the rival king and keeps Culture ethics out. Both have plots against them which they deal with in ways consistent with their beliefs. The doctor by using Culture technology and the protector by adopting the native ways. All this background is gleaned obliquely through childrens' stories, journals and histories written by the natives. You soon come to realize that the doctor has robot spies and kills her enemies with knife missiles and cures patients with high tech potions. The protector wins by being a swashbuckler. But their covers are so masterfully designed that they fool the reader into doubting if they are Culture or not. In the end, the doctor fails in her mission and goes back to the Culture, displaced out into space. The protector goes native, perhaps staying to marry one of his king's concubines. Like other Banks novels, events happen that are puzzling until you collect and put together clues -- not always an easy task. An even more complex novel is his "Use of Weapons." I hope I do not spoil the story for you by revealing some of the plot but I feel you will be more entertained by puzzling less on "just what the hell is going on here." I probably would not have enjoyed it as much if I was not familiar with Banks' universe.
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