Slashdot Mirror
Inversions
Iain (M.) Banks is one of the more famous split personalities in recent publishing history. He has written ten non-genre novels as Ian Banks and produced eight books of science fiction as Iain M. Banks. His first novel was published in 1984. Reviews of his "literary" works have occasionally suggested a merging of the two streams of his career but this ignores the significant fantastic and science fiction elements present even in his early "mainstream" novels. His "science fiction" has been more clearly defined, with the majority of these works being shaped by the galaxy-spanning civilization known as the Culture.
Inversions, the latest novel by Iain M. Banks, is set in a post medieval world. It is a time after the end of empire, with a new model of devolved power emerging from the chaos. There are two narratives, intercut chapter by chapter and covering the same period but set in the capitals of different countries. The main subjects of the narratives are strangers to the society in which they live but have each made themselves indispensable to the leaders of their nations. One has become the personal bodyguard of the Protector, the leader of a revolution which has overthrown a hereditary monarchy and brought new power to the merchant classes. The other is the king's personal doctor, who has reached that position through her inordinate skill despite being both a foreigner and a woman. This has given each stranger the potential to influence without political office, and their stories reflect the story of their chosen country.
This novel could have been published in the black and white cover of a "mainstream" Ian Banks novel and would still have retained much of its value. However, as a work by Iain M. Banks there are significant resonances with the rest of his science fiction oeuvre. In this light the major inversion of the novel is that the tale of external interference with a developing civilisation is told from the viewpoint of the affected society rather than from the technological standpoint of Banks' previous novels. It does this by using narrators indigenous to the world and limited in their understanding of events. The book is largely successful in this use of fallible narrators and viewed from this angle the tales of mythical lands quickly decode to everyday life in a more advanced society.
Inversions is equally successful in the exposition of its themes. It is a book about change, catching societies at the cusp of advance and displaying alternative approaches. The story of nations is counterpointed by that of individuals and it is the telling of their stories which provides an avenue for understanding the lessons Banks is offering in this book. The resultant novel has a very formal format, being balanced between personal and national viewpoints and with each of the two stories providing a partial key to the other. This produces a roman a clef with the option of further keys through familiarity with Banks' other science fiction. In this context, the mapping of personal development to that of a culture is striking. There is a full involvement with the lives and emotions of the central characters which gives a rounded understanding of these protagonists. Their interests and struggles offer sufficient insight into the larger story of nations to be able to infer a long span of the history of this world from the events of a short period. The combination of formalized style for the novel and the writer's informality work well together. The writing flows easily and the story rapidly draws the reader in. Inversions is an interesting alternate in Banks' science fiction, both for its viewpoint and its formal framework, and as such has much to offer.
Purchase this book at fatbrain.
I need to second the recomendation of _Tigana_; it truly is a stunning read. Guy Gavriel Kay's other books are really good as well, but _Tigana_ is his masterpiece (And, unlike most fantasy these days, it's all in one novel).
Back on topic, I've found Iain M. Banks' work to be very good, but he does fall into the typically british problem of wordyness, at least in the opinion of this resident of the Southern U.S.
Zapman
If you like Iain Banks then Wasp Factory is a must. that book floored me and now I find it necessary to read everything by him. The Bridge was also extremely fascinating. Haven't read Inversions yet though...
Lord, I read Feersum Endjinn and then Trainspotting (I. Welsh) directly after. I couldn't spell properly for weeks and picked up a scottish accent.
Be warned!
Seriously, though, Inversions is pretty good, but the best of the culture books has to be Use Of Weapons.
dave
I find it hard to believe Inversions was written by the same author who brought us a novel as shocking as Wasp Factory, as fun as Player of Games or Consider Phlebas and as fascinating as Feersum Enjinn (sp?). Banks is one of the few science fiction authors I have read where I feel that the author is intelligent and thoughtful but doesn't show this merely by flashing around his knowledge. And yet in Inversions he seems to have brought us nothing more than a fairly ordinary fantasy novel. Formal structure? Pah! There are a thousand novels with far more interesting formal structures (and Banks's own books are among those thousands). Banks is a great writer and I hope that in writing Inversions he was having a rest before writing something else truly great!
-- SIGFPE
That was a spoiler.
Yes, maybe. I hope I haven't spoiled it for anyone (and I don't think I have) but I certainly wouldn't give any more detail than that.
Was the Culture telegraphed from halfway through the book ? Well I don't know what cover you had in the USA, but the UK cover screams "Another Culture Novel" all over it (and Iain "M." Banks is a big hint). Then you read it; there's no use of the Culture (one of Banks' better inventions) and you sit through most of the book waiting for it to happen. The final revelation is poor, ineffective and IMHO gratuitous. It would have been a better book without the Culture involvement -- after all, it added nothing. If the Culture was to make an appearance, then it should have been a full-blown invasion of Arrakis scenario, with helicopter drop-ships and a commanding officer obsessed with medieval jousting, "I love the smell of middens in the morning. Smells of -- feudalism". The Amazon links have some Slack (yeah, strange concept). They're auto-generated inside my browser, with a bit of code I wrote to deal with writing pages of book recommendations that needed associated links. Enter the title, set it off and another browser window goes off and searches, then pastes the ISBN back (maybe I should patent the concept 8-) ). Yes, I hate Amazon's patent usage, but I'm in the UK; we don't have FatBrain and BOL doesn't carry enough tech books.
If this book had been written by someone other than Iain Banks, it would have been slated as a poor pastiche of Banks on a bad day.
This is Banks writing very poorly, in a manner that has no originality left and all he can do is re-hash threads that he was already in danger of over-using. It has all the old Banks favourites in there; the slightly-suppressed horror, the grimy dungeons, but it's unusually light on polished steel spaceships.
Then right at the end, a piece of the Culture's flying cutlery pops up out of nowhere and saves the day. This is a gratuitous deus ex machina that's below the standards of Jeffrey Archer, let alone E E Smith. Any fool can write space opera if you're allowed to simply save the plot by arbitrary invention of unexpected technology.
I never liked Iain M. Banks as much as Iain ~M. (just not my taste), but even the non space-opera hasn't been so good in his last few books. He always was variable :- compare The Bridge against the similar, but less well executed, themes of Walking on Glass. His best books; Espedair Street or The Crow Road maintain an (often hilarious) dramatic narrative, whereas A Song of Stone or Canal Dreams are frankly dull.
Mind you, if you liked Espedair Street, read Bill Drummond's 45 for the story of what it was really like.
An earlier novel which uses the same trick is Ursula le Guin's "The Dispossessed" (1974), a stunning meditation on the nature of cooperation and society. Le Guin is a much more distant and impersonal author than Banks, but I have often wondered whether she isn't quite an influence.
Of course, "Consider Phlebas" especially can sometimes seem like a gloriously written high-acceleration remix of just about *everyone* from the best '70s and early '80s SF, with all manner of good ideas getting a look in and then taken a step beyond.
There's definitely something of Le Guin's Hainish Ekumen ("The Left Hand of Darkness") about the Culture. But as with everything else in Banks's books the Culture soon comes over as an entity with a much more developed and interesting character (and also, one possessed of a definite sense of humour!)
Reading through this review reminded me of several other books which might be of interest. Set at about the same time at the end of the medieval period is "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco, which also deals with a society, in this case a monastic one, reacting to a world of learning on the edge of many advances.
If you enjoy tales with a twist (and if you like reading Iain M. Banks I think that's given) I'd also suggest Guy Gavriel Kaye's 'Tigana' as being a worthwhile read.
Any other suggestions out there for books to explore?
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Iain M Bank's most unusually structured novel and IMHO his best sci fi novel is "Use of Weapons".
One story starts in the past and works forward, the other starts in the present and works backwards, and of course they meet in the end. You have to read it as least twice to really piece together all the subtleties in it.
If you're new to Iain M Banks work, read "Use of Weapons" or "Consider Pheblas" first of his culture novels. "Inversions" and "Excession" are much better read once you understand the culture background.