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Amazon.co.uk Review
Review
Dazzlingly original. (DAILY MAIL )
Banks is a phenomenon: the widly successful, fearlessly creative author of brilliant and disturbing non-genre novels, he's equally at home writing pure science fiction of a peculiarly gnarly energy and elegance. (WILLIAM GIBSON )
Sharp, witty, comprehensively terrifying. (OBSERVER )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
... Indistinguishable from magic,
This review is from: Feersum Endjinn (Paperback)
In Arthur C. Clarke's famous saying, any sufficiently advanced technology is...This book tells a tale of a time when the Earth is populated by descendants of those people who were (or chose to be) left behind when technology reached a point which they could no longer cope with. As a result they live in a world which they barely understand, surrounded by the legacy of people using a science way beyond them. Nonetheless, humans being adaptable creatures, they have created a society which just about functions, using the technology they were left, packed with all the usual human virtues and vices, lacking only the faintest idea of why they are where they are. It is only when they discover that their civilisation - and indeed planet - is threatened by something far beyond their abilities that they have to come to terms with what they have lost. Characteristically, they respond in different ways, most of them counterproductive. The book is told from four viewpoints: a power struggle within the ruling clan, a loser in that power struggle, a boy caught up in the struggle without realising it and a mysterious external factor called an "asura" who despite her initial air of harmlessness is clearly going to be bad news for someone. Initially the book is hard to get to grips with as these four strands interweave, particularly as the boy speaks/writes a phonetic English which takes hard work and practice to read at a reasonably normal pace. However, as the story starts to gel, the characters and plotting slowly become irresistible and by the end the reader has a real feeling of satisfaction for sticking with it. This is not as easy to read as some of the Culture novels but in its own way it is every bit as rewarding as, say, The Player Of Games.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic but difficult book,
By
This review is from: Feersum Endjinn (Paperback)
The world of "Feersum Endjinn" is incredibly weird. Set in the very far future, the Encroachment threatens the Earth with a new Ice Age and the possible extinction of life on the planet itself. Only the remnants of a civilisation are left on Earth ,with most of the rest of its inhabitants having long since departed for the stars. The society that is left is totally bizarre; it is organised on feudal lines and most of the people live in a huge castle the size and height of a large mountain range. The inhabitants have developed very strange and alien powers of the mind; they possess implants to provide them with AI and their minds are "shared" in a hierarchical manner , with "The Privileged" being able to access people minds at will.In parallel with the real world, there is a surreal virtual reality world called "The Crypt" which people can access through their mind ; a sort of world data bank that contains all the thoughts and actions of the past , a world into which people can even download their souls for reincarnation after death, often returning as chimerical animals. It is the complex interaction between the real world and The Crypt which makes this book a difficult one to understand and enjoy. Banks makes a lot of demands on the reader as he creates this convincing but radically different future world. A world where Life and the Afterlife , the Spirit and the Material World ,have fused together and created a totally new reality.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Strange Read,
By
This review is from: Feersum Endjinn (Paperback)
Many people have thoroughly enjoyed this book as you can see from the other reviews. I however found it to be less engaging than the other Iain M Banks books.
The characters seemed rather more shallow than those in other books - also the frequent jumps to cryptspace can be quite hard to follow. To those about to read this book I would recommend reading it quickly in a few short bursts, you'll probably get more out of it. Personally I found this alot less engaging than Iain's other books - most of which I cannot put down! However, maybe this is a bit like marmite, so many other people have thoroughly enjoyed it!
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