Book: The Algebraist
Nov. 4th, 2009 06:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livAuthor: Iain M Banks
Details: (c) Iain M Banks 2004; Pub Orbit 2005; ISBN 1-84149-229-9
Verdict: The algebraist has some great moments sadly buried in verbiage.
Reasons for reading it: I generally like Banks' stuff, and a non-Culture space opera suited my mood when I picked this up.
How it came into my hands: Newcastle-under-Lyme library.
There's a lot to like about The algebraist. It displays Banks' speciality, of doing huge scale sensawunda SF, with a truly diverse and plausibly ancient galaxy, combined with characters you can really empathize with and care about. There was a lot of pleasure in the way the scales are kept in balance, neither losing sight of the immensity of the setting, nor making ordinary people with relationships and convictions and feelings seem trivial. There are plenty of complex, exciting, interweaving plots, all of which I cared about, and lots of really cool worldbuilding.
The problem is that the book just gets bogged down a lot in the middle. It's over 500 pages, and it's not quite clever enough or quite thrilling enough to keep my attention for that long. One of those books that I felt quite sucked into when I was actually reading, but then unmotivated to pick it up again once I left it. As a result it's taken me several weeks to read it, and by the time I got to the (proportionally somewhat rushed) ending I'd half forgotten most of the subplots from the earlier sections.
There are some amazingly powerful and memorable images, and fantastically alien aliens, and the main plot thread with the quest to find the Dweller List is original and sound, and Fassin makes a really lovely protagonist. But the frame story with the Head Gardener was a bit annoying and felt like Banks pulling his usual trick but in a very half-hearted way. The book is not brain-breakingly clever like some of Banks' best stuff, which meant that it was less hard work to read but also less rewarding.
Also, the book suffers from a sad lack of algebra!
Details: (c) Iain M Banks 2004; Pub Orbit 2005; ISBN 1-84149-229-9
Verdict: The algebraist has some great moments sadly buried in verbiage.
Reasons for reading it: I generally like Banks' stuff, and a non-Culture space opera suited my mood when I picked this up.
How it came into my hands: Newcastle-under-Lyme library.
There's a lot to like about The algebraist. It displays Banks' speciality, of doing huge scale sensawunda SF, with a truly diverse and plausibly ancient galaxy, combined with characters you can really empathize with and care about. There was a lot of pleasure in the way the scales are kept in balance, neither losing sight of the immensity of the setting, nor making ordinary people with relationships and convictions and feelings seem trivial. There are plenty of complex, exciting, interweaving plots, all of which I cared about, and lots of really cool worldbuilding.
The problem is that the book just gets bogged down a lot in the middle. It's over 500 pages, and it's not quite clever enough or quite thrilling enough to keep my attention for that long. One of those books that I felt quite sucked into when I was actually reading, but then unmotivated to pick it up again once I left it. As a result it's taken me several weeks to read it, and by the time I got to the (proportionally somewhat rushed) ending I'd half forgotten most of the subplots from the earlier sections.
There are some amazingly powerful and memorable images, and fantastically alien aliens, and the main plot thread with the quest to find the Dweller List is original and sound, and Fassin makes a really lovely protagonist. But the frame story with the Head Gardener was a bit annoying and felt like Banks pulling his usual trick but in a very half-hearted way. The book is not brain-breakingly clever like some of Banks' best stuff, which meant that it was less hard work to read but also less rewarding.
Also, the book suffers from a sad lack of algebra!
