Against a Dark Background

This one's exquisitely written and full of interesting ideas, which is more-or-less what you can expect from an Iain M. Banks book. But for whatever reason, "Against a Dark Background" failed to hold my attention like the Culture novels I've read, though I did manage to finish it. As usual, it's an example of the shiny, widescreen version of SF. The impossibly skilled and sexy Lady Sharrow, a high-born noble in a universe that's a strange mix of the futuristic and the atavistic, must flee a religion that's made her death central to their belief system while she hunts amusingly strange artifacts for fun, for immense profits, and sometimes for her family's very survival. Fantasy tropes -- castles, hermits, swords, and mounts -- pop up show more here and there while the lady and her chemically-bonded band of adventures confront all manner of dangers. The author doesn't skip out on the blood and pain -- there are some simply excruciating deaths here -- and he constructs some lovely set pieces, most memorably the one that describes the minute-by-minute uncertainties of a crash-landing on a snowbound planet. To show that he's not the average paperback writer, Banks then seamlessly incorporates the long-term effects of this event into his character and narrative. And then there's also the curious pull of the artifacts themselves, specifically that of a lazy gun, a weapon that seems to fool the laws of physics while exerting an inexplicable psychological pull on those who seek it. There's a forest planet and a city built on barges and a nascent religion that hopes to conquer the entire system, just in case you needed more.

But I also thought that there was something missing here, among all the impeccably wrought sentences that drape themselves comfortably across the page. Maybe the fact that the world that Banks describes here isn't as cleanly futuristic as that of his Culture novels that got to me. Set on a star system located by unlucky chance thousands of light years from any others, this world seems to feel the weight of its own limitations. Sometimes the medieval throwbacks or anachronisms suggested that something had gotten stuck, both in the book and in the civilization it describes. Or it's the lack of the Culture itself, that protean, hard-to-define organism that provides a convenient thread through Banks's other works. Or maybe it's just that there's far too much of "Against a Dark Background": while it has its charms, any book, however charming, might struggle to sustain itself over nearly eight hundred pages. Or maybe it's just the fact that Lady Sharrow fulfils every science fiction's checklist a bit too perfectly. Lasers, castles, spaceships, motorcycles, and hot, chemically engineered sex? I'm glad nobody saw me reading this one on the bus.

If you're a big space opera fan, it's possible that none of this will really bother you. But I read Banks between literary novels, and so this one got a bit too purple for me at times, not to mention a bit too long. It's not bad book in its genre, and, for two lousy bucks at the Kindle Store, I certainly got my money's worth. But in my opinion, "Against a Dark Background" just isn't the strongest thing that this author ever wrote. show less

Long live the Useless Kings: Definitely great vintage Banks SF, which is not set in the Culture universe.

Golter, the planet where the action takes place, is old and extremely isolated and has suffered many rises and collapses of civilizations, some so advanced that their technology now looks like magic. The overall impression is a cross between Vance's Dying Earth and the Mote in God's Eye, liberally sprinled with cyberpunkish dystopia and Banks' tongue-in-cheek anti-capitalism.

The heroine, Sharrow, chases after the Lazy Gun, a long-lost military artifact of tremendous power, while being chased by a religious cult dedicated to killing her. She rounds up her old war buddies for one last hurrah and they are off to the races, show more punctuated with flashbacks about the war and Geis and Breyguhn, her cousin and half-sister, respectively.

Through the flashbacks it gradually becomes clear that guilt largely motivates Sharrow. Guilt about the previous time she found a Lazy Gun, and caused thousands to die, seems to be what separated her from Miz, her former lover. Sharrow is said to be a star cyberhacker, yet never does any hacking. Turns out that she killed her android butler as a teenager, doing a hacking prank. Yet all that guilt is only implied, never in the forefront.

The rest of Sharrow's team is pretty sketchily characterized, but that's OK as Sharrow, her family, and Golter are the only characters who really matter.

The plot rambles around somewhat and takes us on a tour of Golter's bizarre social/political/technological landscape, thus allowing Banks to pull out some truly bizarre societies to serve as a background to the main storyline.

It isn't too hard to guess how it will end, especially if you have read Banks before: it will end _BADLY_. But it is definitely a fun ride getting there. show less

A sprawling, imaginative science fiction action-adventure story full of fun stuff: bizarre cults, ancient artifacts, explosions, heists, daring escapes, treasure hunts, manhunts, mysteries of the past, surprise revelations, quirky ideas, life, death, and a darkly whimsical sense of humor. I will admit that the narrative's habit of jumping rapidly back and forth in time on a scale of anything from hours to decades and of not always explaining key plot points immediately sometimes had me feeling briefly confused, but I think that's likely to be more my fault than Banks', as I read much of it in a state of serious sleep-deprivation. This is definitely a book you want to be awake for.

We aren't given much reason to give a damn about Sharrow, we aren't given any feeling for the connection between her and the remaining 4 of her original 7 virally bonded battle companions, and we have no sensory connection to the exotic landscapes they risk on the supposedly(because, really who cares?) harrowing scavenger hunt of antiquities to find the one that will save Sharrow's life. If you like huge pointless body counts, gruesome dismemberment and think there is a point to saving a life by risking all the lives that matter, sure sink more hours than you can really spare in 644 pages of pleated plot that hides the near complete lack of ability to write more than isolated scenes. But that's only if you think that escaping after show more waking up in the custody of your enemies is a valid trope, because that happens repeatedly, past ad nauseam. Banks surely thinks well of himself, but no one else need bother. show less

Against a Dark Background was my first Banks, and I came to it with high expectations (because of glowing praise for Banks on another book site which I follow). I would have to say that this book was a pretty big disappointment.

Sharrow is one of the least sympathetic protagonists I can remember; in fact of all the characters only the android is mildly interesting. The plot meanders with little rhyme or reason; people do stupid things with little reason but to move the plot from one dead-end to a new tableaux. The final confrontations of the last 100 pages or so are reasonably entertaining, but hardly sufficient payoff to compensate for the rest of the novel.

All in all, I'd say skip this one. Fortunately, I have gone on to other Banks' show more books, and found them generally quite a bit better. show less

Vicious stuff; the kind of thing you expect from Banks. The man is just amazing, an imagination more fecund than anything else I've ever encountered.

Like Use of Weapons we have the destructive sibling rivalry, like Consider Phlebas we have a grand tour, meeting strange and marvellous things along the way.
But most important, in the background we have the *large* theme.
In the end, like the Culture novels, this is a book about the point of life.

The setting is a planetary system millions of light years from any other star and thus incapable of expanding beyond a very finite space. Given this limitation, civilizations have risen and fallen countless times. The current system is an extreme version of the 20th century west mixed with the show more medieval --- wealthy corporations as more powerful than states, excessive bureaucracy and legalism --- but the specific details are not that important.

The important issue is the question of should it be changed? And if so, too what? If it should be changed, how much suffering is justified in doing so? And what's the point of change, anyway; the new system will be just one more regime like countless regimes that have gone before.

What makes Banks so interesting (and so unpalatable to many readers) is that he has no answers to these questions, and that he doesn't have much faith in the stock answers society provides. IMHO, for the most part his SF books, including this one are arguments by example against the pat ways in which society answers these questions when they arise.

This book is especially upsetting in that he doesn't even offer up the hedonistic comfort of the Culture books, the idea that man is optimized for pleasure and might as well concentrate on that. All we get is a very Buddhist endless cycle of suffering with no escape. show less

The first Banks book I have struggled with. I nearly stopped at 100 pages, which is the chance I give most books. As this was one of my favourite authors I extended my 100 page rule to 200, and even then I nearly put it down. This book really struggles to get you involved and the first half feels like a miss mash of 'cool' settings and scenarios. I did in fact pick up another book, but this one had gotten under my skin at that point so I came back to it.

Ultimately I'm giving this 5 stars. I do have a caveat that I generally do not leave reviews for books I do not finish, so all my reviews are 4 or 5 star.

In summary there are two plot hooks here. We have "the main character is being hunted" plot. The solution to this, is "to reunite the show more gang and pull off the heist" plot. There's other stuff going on of course. Cue loads of flashbacks, wacky firefights, weirdo sci-fi characters and a rather pessimistic view of human nature in spite of the joviality of some of the characters. The further into the story you get, the more gripping and tense it becomes. Definitely worth the slog. Banks skill at writing brutality and violence only works due to the implicit understanding the reader has, that this is all abhorrent. Humans are tragic, flawed, and will repeat mistakes. In the end it's not the hope that kills you, it's the lack of hope. show less