Customer Reviews

Inversions

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

The book is made up of two stories that take place on the same world. Two Culture Special Circumstances agents, the bodyguard De War and the doctor Vosill, end up on a pre-contact planet. The man, DeWar has an non-interventionist philosophy which he adheres to strictly while guarding the life of a warlord cum king. Far away, on another continent, the woman Vosill tries to nudge a barbarian king into modernity by acting as both his physician and advisor.
So far so good. I had hoped that these two disparate plot lines would have been united by the last third of the book into one. In past novels, such as Player of Games, Banks aptly was able to comment on our world's politics while making great Science Fiction. This novel could have looked into the tensions between trying to make savages on the world "better" or having respect for the "savages" and letting nature take its course. Another tension Banks could have played with who is the real savage? Is it the people on the planet clawing their way back to civilization from a high-tech apocalyptic war or is it the Culture that seems to foster them with the best of intentions.

Not in this novel. Instead the two storylines and the above-mentioned questions never are brought together or fully explored. This is all the more disappointing as Bank's skill at creating believable worlds and people as well as complex political dynamics is as good as ever.
The whole thus is less than the sum of its parts.
This book would have been better off as two.

And I never say stuff like that.

This is a very good book in lots of ways that other people have already pointed out. One that particularly strikes me, though, is that some lucky people can read it twice and get two different novels out of it. If you haven't read anything in Banks' "Culture" series, read this *first*. It'll be enjoyable and mysterious and engrossing, and satisfying despite the unresolve conundra.

Then read the other "Culture" books. You'll think "oh, is *that* what was going on in 'Inversions'!" and you'll be able to go back and read it again for another entirely good time.

This is one of those all too rare books that tantalize the reader with a deep and interesting mystery, and then when the mystery is finally revealed (in this case, by reading a different book entirely), the solution to the mystery is fully as rich and interesting as the mystery itself was.

Read it at once.

The book itself is hard to explain. Many of the characters and their situations become "inverted" as the story progresses. For example, one character tells a story of being rescued by carnival clowns and joining the circus to repay their kindness. In reality, the "clowns" are her rapists and she is seeking revenge. Read the book and you will find that it is more profound and thought-provoking than any hack/slash or heroic fantasty you've read before.

This was the first Banks novel I read, and I specifically took it with the intention of not reading a Culture novel, as I have heard of the reputation of the Culture novels and wanted to start with a normal Banks novel instead. Needless to say that I ended up being very impressed with Banks when I finished. (as I expected I would be, if only from his reputation)

But that said, certain things about Inversions bugged me. The book left me unfulfilled for one thing, for too much went unexplained at the end. Of course, the reader could make up his own mind about what truly expired, but still.... Plus there was the little matter of that strange dagger...

Then I read the reviews on Amazon and understood the significance of "the smaller things" (relating to the Culture) in Inversions. It was almost like an epiphany. My fellow reviewers are right: You can start with Inversions but it is preferable to read another Culture novel first. The book will just mean so much more. It is however, still a good read for a non-Banks reader who's just looking for a good SF novel to curl up with on a Sunday afternoon.

Although you can read Banks' Culture novels in any order and not miss out, this is the one Culture novel you should not start with. It would be a good book if you had read no other Culture book, but if you have read one this becomes a great book. Told from two different, seemingly unrelated, viewpoints, Banks forsakes his ultra-high tech settings and tells a compelling story in an almost fantasy setting. While his books sometimes have the tendency to start slow, Inversions doesn't. The bifurcated storyline keeps the reader involved until the well thought out payoff at the end.

Out of the Banks books i have read this didn't seem to reach the typical Banks standard. The story was fascinating however the structure didnt merge as well as his other books. In his other stories (especially the ones with more than one tale going on), there always came a point where the two stories merged and the twist became apparent but i didnt see that this time. However, Banks' standard has not faultered. This book was still exceptional and the complexity of it once again takes Iain Banks way ahead of all other SF writers

This book easily belongs on the bottom of the Iain Banks collection. A 350 page meandering plotless wonder without the usual Banks' array of colorful intriguing characters. A plot that could easily be summarized in under a page is not that unusual for Banks. (See Look to Windward or Player of Games) However, he usually captivates and entertains by painting lush detailed pictures of a fascinating universe populated by complex compelling characters who take part in sweeping events that are more powerful than they are. The plot is usually simple but the dressing is wonderful. Not so with Inversions. I found myself struggling to even finish the thing as I simply did not care what happened with the Doctor, the Bodyguard, the King, and the Protector, much less the Doctor's assistant or the Protector's son or his concubine or anybody. Banks fails to create even marginal interest in the world these people populate and the razor-thin plot fails to give any sort of weight to the "twist" at the end.

What a disappointment. If you've never read Banks, this book might seem to be ok because he is head and shoulders above most other SF writers even if he were writing in his sleep. But compared to the other stuff he's done, this is pure ....

Also, thinly veiled references to the Culture are preachy and uninteresting to those readers who are familiar with Banks' Culture novels and they are simply confusing and seemingly irrelevant to those who are not. This book is a mess.

For some of the best science fiction on the market today, go to Consider Phlebus or Feersum Endjinn or Look to Windward. Now THOSE are fantastic.