Feersum Endjinn [Paperback]

In a future where the ancients have long since departed Earth for the stars, those left behind live complacent lives filled with technological marvels they no longer understand. Then a cosmic threat known as the Encroachment begins a devastating ice age on Earth, and it sets in motion a series of events that will bring together a cast of original characters who must struggle through war, political intrigues and age-old mysteries to save the world. (B 4worned, 1 oph Banx' carrokters theenx en funetic inglish, which makes for some tough reading but also some innovative prose.)

Another truly impressive piece of work from the pen of a master storyteller. (STARBURST )

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 )

Count Sessine is about to die for the very last time ... Chief Scientist Gadfium is about to receive the mysterious message she has been waiting for from the Plain of Sliding Stones ... And Bascule the Teller, in search of an ant, is about to enter the chaos of the crypt ... And everything is about to change ... For this is the time of the encroachment and, although the dimming sun still shines on the vast, towering walls of Serehfa Fastness, the end is close at hand. The King knows it, his closest advisers know it, yet sill they prosecute the war against the clan Engineers with increasing savagery. The crypt knows it too; so an emissary has been sent, an emissary who holds the key to all their futures.

Praise for Iain M. Banks

‘Sharp, witty, comprehensively terrifying’ OBSERVER

‘Dazzlingly original’ DAILY MAIL

‘An exquisitely riotous tour de force of the imagination which writes its own rules simply for the pleasure of breaking them’ TIME OUT

‘An exhilarating world with a logic and beauty of its own’ THE TIMES

Also by Iain M. Banks

Consider Phlebas The Player of Games Use of Weapons The State of the Art Against a Dark Background Excession Inversions Look to Windward

Iain Banks came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, THE WASP FACTORY, in 1984. He has since gained enormous popular and critical acclaim for both his mainstream and his science fiction novels.