Description
Book SynopsisThe novels of Iain M. Banks have forever changed the face of modern science fiction. His Culture books combine breathtaking imagination with exceptional storytelling, and have secured his reputation as one of the most extraordinary and influential writers in the genre.
''Banks is a phenomenon'' William Gibson
In the winter palace, the King''s new physician has more enemies than she realises. But then she also has more defences than even her most hardened adversaries could imagine.
In another palace, far across the mountains, sits the regicidal Protector General. His chief bodyguard also has enemies to worry about, with the threat of treachery and assassination never far away.
And beneath the surface of these feudal courts - behind the spies, murders, politics and intrigues - lies an entirely different kind of threat, an entity that nobody would ever suspect.
Praise for the Culture series:
''Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution'' Independent on Sunday
''Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future'' Guardian
''Banks''s sci-fi, at its best, is staggeringly inventive, beautifully written, dramatic and often very funny. His stories are packed with ideas, warships with minds very much of their own, alien races, charismatic drones and intergalactic politics'' New Scientist
''Jam-packed with extraordinary invention'' Scotsman
''Compulsive reading'' Sunday Telegraph
The Culture series:
Consider Phlebas
The Player of Games
Use of Weapons
Excession
Inversions
Look to Windward
Matter
Surface Detail
The Hydrogen Sonata
The State of the Art
Other books by Iain M. Banks:
Against a Dark Background
Feersum Endjinn
The Algebraist
Also now available:
The Culture: The Drawings - an extraordinary collection of original illustrations faithfully reproduced from sketchbooks Banks kept in the 1970s and 80s, depicting the ships, habitats, geography, weapons and language of Banks'' Culture series of novels in incredible detail.
Trade ReviewBanks is a phenomenon: the wildly successful, fearlessly creative author of brilliant and disturbing non-genre novels, he's equally at home writing pure science fiction of a perculiarly gnarly energy and elegance * William Gibson *
There is now no British SF writer to whose work I look forward with greater keenness * THE TIMES *
Poetic, humourous, baffling, terrifying, sexy - the books of Iain M. Banks are all these things and more * NME *
