Sheer delight.
Addition to Banks’ wonderful space-opera series (without the middle initial, he also writes impressive mainstream novels) about the far-future galactic Culture (Surface Detail, 2010, etc.), a liberal-anarchic, multispecies civilization guided and sustained, more or less invisibly, by Minds, artificial intelligences that take such physical forms as spaceships and habitats.
Vastly more intelligent than humans, millions of times faster and mostly benevolent, Minds are truly godlike entities. (Asked “Is this what gods would actually be like?” Banks replied: “If we’re lucky.”) Now, the Gzilt civilization, an almost perversely peaceful military society whose precepts arise from the Book of Truth, an ancient tome containing technological and intellectual predictions nearly all of which have proved correct, are preparing to Sublime, or vanish, into a set of higher dimensions where existence is thought to be almost infinitely rich and complex. As the Gzilt make their preparations, several rather primitive scavenger species gather nearby (one ship comes into orbit, as Banks puts it, with the “warp-engine equivalent of loud clanks and clouds of black smoke”), ready to grab whatever goodies the Gzilt leave behind. But then, a sudden, devastating attack destroys the Gzilt Regimental High Command. The reason seems to involve a shattering secret about the Book of Truth and the establishment of the Culture 10,000 years ago. One of the few survivors, reserve Lt. Cmdr. Vyr Cossont, a bewildered four-armed musician with, self-confessedly, no military skills, receives orders to locate and question Ngaroe QiRia, possibly the Culture’s oldest living person and the only one who might have some idea why the Book of Truth is so important and what really happened 10 millennia ago. Problem is, even assisted by Berdle, a powerful Mind avatar, and an erratic battle android who’s convinced everything’s merely a simulation, can she survive long enough to complete her mission? Scotland-resident Banks’ Culture yarns, the science-fiction equivalent of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, brim with wit and wisdom, providing incomparable entertainment, with fascinating and highly original characters, challenging ideas and extrapolations, and dazzling action seamlessly embedded in a satirical-comedy matrix.
Sheer delight.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-3162-1237-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Orbit/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
A wild riff on interspecies warfare sure to make pet owners think twice the next time their tabby cats dart by.
A war novel/religious allegory about cats, dogs and giant ants driven by a hive mind. Yes, really.
So, let’s imagine W. Bruce Cameron’s silly and maudlin A Dog’s Purpose recast as a violent and frightening post-apocalyptic global battle for the souls of Earth’s survivors, layered with a messiah prophecy that makes The Matrix look simplistic by comparison. If that’s a bit much, maybe just think Animal Farm re-imagined by Orson Scott Card. Either way, you end up with this devilishly entertaining debut about anthropomorphized animals caught in a conflict between an invading army of insects and the planet’s few remaining humans. The novel begins from the point of view of Sebastian, an aloof but observant house cat whose only true companion is a dog named Sheba. Through animal eyes, he describes Earth’s descent into chaos as giant ants—that’s Hymenoptera unus to you—break through the planet’s crust to wreak havoc on human civilization. At the heart of their plan is the decision to release a virus that gives all animals self-awareness, a bipedal structure and better-than-human intelligence. After the change, Sebastian recreates himself as the cat-warrior Mort(e), the hero of a breakaway army called The Red Sphinx. “Don’t you all know who this is?” says his superior to a new crop of recruits. “This is Mort(e). The hero of the Battle of the Alleghenies. The Mastermind of the Chesapeake Bridge Bombing. The crazy bastard who assassinated General Fitzpatrick in broad daylight. This choker was killing humans before some of you were born.” After a while the story gets kind of messy with a memetic virus called “EMSAH,” the aforementioned prophecy and the preordained battle to end all wars, but it’s still awfully good sci-fi that imagines a world where humans are no longer at the top of the food chain.
A wild riff on interspecies warfare sure to make pet owners think twice the next time their tabby cats dart by.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61695-427-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
An adventurous fantasy romp only for the die-hard fan.
A mysterious woodsman joins forces with an earnest princess to stop a plot that could ruin both of their kingdoms in this fantasy romance.
Princess Sorcha keeps a close eye on her loved ones, constantly living in fear that her brother and adopted sisters will be taken away from her. When she uncovers a plan to murder her brother and steal his queen, Sorcha throws herself (quite literally) into ruining the enemy’s coldhearted scheme. In the fray, she is taken prisoner to be used as leverage. Her freedom comes at the hands of a man known only as the Woodsman. A Robin Hood–esque hero, he leads a secret rebellion to overthrow the corrupt family in power in his woodland country. With Sorcha’s ability to harness fire and the Woodsman’s talent for communing with nature, they realize their combined magical strength is the key to protecting those they love. Sorcha’s close circle of friends and family rely heavily on previously established relationships from prior books, and the setup is a direct relation to past events. Newcomers to Sparks’ (Eight Simple Rules for Dating a Dragon, 2018, etc.) Embraced by Magic series will undoubtedly be lost when attempting to understand character connections and references to previous skirmishes and battles. The relationship between the hero and heroine is background noise to the tangled web of political machinations by cartoonish villains, but the inventive setting and depth of worldbuilding prevent this from feeling too much like a paint-by-numbers, cookie-cutter fantasy romance. But while Sparks’ crafting of distinct kingdoms and fantasy races is the strongest part of the series, this installment carries on the earlier tradition of middling, glacially slow romances.
An adventurous fantasy romp only for the die-hard fan.Pub Date: March 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-3004-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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