Feersum Endjinn

I first read this book when it originally came out, but only in small chunks and so didn't really get it. It took me almost to the end of the book to work out that we were actually inside a joke megastructure that was actually built like an "ordinary" castle but scaled up many, many times, and that was so old that actual physical landscape had formed inside some of the rooms. So I put it back on the shelf for another day.

Now, I've finally re-read it, in sufficiently large chunks to get a far better picture of what was happening. And I really enjoyed it. The political and military scrabbling about was suitably byzantine, the sheer imagination of the mad world-building (that ultimately actually had a point) was breath-taking, and I show more actually developed a strong liking for Bascule, the POV character who speaks in phonetics. Admittedly, I actually had to read Bascule's episodes out loud (fortunately, I wasn't in public or in company at the time), the way I do with foreign languages, which aided the flow of reading a lot. Trying to parse Bascule's phonetic speech was difficult, but speaking it made things much easier. Possibly, it rendered Bascule into a proper British character, of a sort I could identify with; though readers should not make the mistake of equating phonetic speech with a lack of intelligence.

Bascule is a Teller, someone who can project themselves into the data Crypt, a repository for uploaded personalities and the sum total of human knowledge. We follow another character, a military commander who makes a few too many enemies on his own side, into the Crypt after he is assassinated. Two other characters - a female scientist and an incarnated digital personality with a Mission - make up the other protagonists in the intrigue.

I got the impression that the Crypt was a trial run for the virtual Hells we would later find in 'Surface Detail'; and indeed, the whole thing has a baroque feel that Banks would return to on a number of occasions. But I was pleased to have revisited this book, and delighted with what I found. show less

Iain M Banks went off and wrote a few non-Culture sf books just to prove he could, and what we got was a dazzling, baroque novel about a moribund future Earth about to be swamped by an interstellar dust cloud and the efforts of various parties to activate ancient defense systems which, if they actually exist, may save the day, while the ruling elite for reasons of their own, work to thwart these efforts. The book is also notable because fully one third of it is spelled fonetikly, with the result that it's best read in a Scottish accent and probably some sort of literary joke about Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. It's utterly brilliant.

Re(listen) - huh. It's a cyberpunk novel.

I'm normally against infodumps, but I honestly believe Feersum Endjinn could have benefited from one or two.

I was able to follow the multiple POV sections with little difficulty, but felt completely adrift trying to form any sort of sense about the larger world and purpose of the book. I got there in the end, but the journey was exhausting.

Oh, and one quarter of the book is written phonetically. People who are willing to read aloud or who are adept at deciphering the meaning of the average social media post will have the most luck with those sections.

Received via NetGalley.

This is a funny one. It's all very good and interesting, but it has some flaws that let it down. Like, the phonetically spelled narration is just a quirk, it doesn't mean anything. The whole ending is a bit meh, like Good AIs Did It And Are Coming Back, which is cool, but we don't see enough of the existing political machinations. This is the end of the world and the beginning of the world through the eyes of a few minor players who become major players for reasons they don't understand and aren't really explained. The only person who is in a position to explain and understand can't do the second and thus the first until the final scene, by when it serves the plot purpose only to explain what we have experienced over the last 250 pages. show more But what we experience is great... a future Earth (maybe) where most people have taken the AIs and fucked off, the remnents live in a giant (like really super giant beyond all comprehension) self-repairing castle, and their computer systems are hopelessly corrupted by a data-virus called the Chaos. There are mutant beasts and computer animals and machine ghosts; a war between the states who live on different levels of the castles; quasi-religious attitudes towards getting information out of the cloud; insane future tech, and all sorts of lovelyness. show less

This is a serious work of the imagination. It doesn't really fit in the Culture novels, but it's definitely some Hard-SF with a beautiful vision of a far old Earth filled with so many Big Ideas. We've got everything from allotted resurrections, ghosts solving their own murders, enormous and layered virtual realities, virus-ridden fantasy realms, and a Chaos filled with AIs. If that isn't enough, the Earth is going through some major changes. You know... like destruction. Even more physical Big Ideas keep flowing in and I reveled in it all. :)

But don't just think this is just a novel of ideas. The characters and the individual stories were all fascinating and funny and full of great reveals and twists. More than enough for three normal show more novels, even. :)

I happily skipped one major complaint of this novel by listening to the audiobook version with Peter Kenny. He's awesome. That's great all by itself. But the best part is breezing right past the creative spellings of words. You know. Like the title of this book. Weird, right? But it's just Fearsome Engine. :) I'm sure this would be fine for people who read Shakespeare or any number of novels including Mark Twain's, but it is dense and some people might get turned off.

Which would be a real shame because this novel is a real shining star of creativity. It reads like a fantasy adventure and mystery while having all the great trappings of a heavy SF dive. :)

I totally recommend this SF for anyone who wants to stretch their wings and wonder at the beauty of creation. :) No Culture Experience Required. :) show less

As usual with Banks’ SF incarnation you get the feeling that he’s far more interested in the world and ideas than the characters in the story. Feersum Endjinn is his first non-Culture SF novel, a story set in the far future with a fractured narrative which follows four characters through events in a world which is heading to a crisis point. None of these narrators are straightforward characters – one is a newborn adult, another is a chief scientist in receipt of a mysterious message, a third a murdered officer and the last a ‘Teller’ who tells his first person narrative phonetically. As ever with Banks all four are subject to some very nasty (near sadistic) moments but the joy is entirely in the worldbuilding. The great skill show more is in how the details of this future world are unspooled across the book and how they’re almost of a piece with the story, the reader being able to puzzle together what’s going on from the jigsaw of the narrators but never so far ahead that they feel the narrators are being made to look deliberately stupid.

The ending, as in almost every Banks book, isn’t quite satisfying as we’re led up to the crucial moments, then cut away to everything being resolved. It’s like a sex scene cutting away to post-coital bliss without orgasm. The process is great fun and we can see it’s all worked out nicely but we’re denied the moment of greatest pleasure. The characters get the ending they need though, and that’s perhaps the important thing. While I still adore the idea of the Culture and the stories Banks told with it, on this evidence it’s a shame he didn’t stretch himself into creating more new and fascinating worlds like this. show less

This book is an utter delight from start to finish: audacious, confident, crazily imaginative, tightly plotted, continually surprising, homorous, human, with warmly observed central characters you both like and care about. Uniquely for an Iain M. Banks book, finishing it made me smile. In all the (considerable) time since it was published, I've never encountered anything quite like it. Treat yourself!