In The Algebraist, Iain Banks returns to spectacular space opera but not to his familiar Culture universe. His new setting is a complex, war-torn galaxy with an entirely different history going back almost to the Big Bang...
For short-lived 'Quick' races like humans, space is dominated by the complicated, grandiose Mercatoria whose rule is both military and religious. To the Dwellers who may live billions of years, the galaxy consists of their gas-giant planets--the rest is debris.

Our human hero Fassin Taak is a 'Slow Seer' privileged to work with the Dwellers of the gas-giant Nasqueron in his home system Ulubis. His life work is rummaging for data in their vast, disorganised memories and libraries. Unfortunately, without knowing it, he's come close to an ancient secret of unimaginable importance.

Though Ulubis is currently cut off from the galactic wormhole travel network, two interstellar battle fleets are racing for this secret. The hissable arch-villain Luseferous--whose tastes run to torture, atrocity and genocide--seems bound to arrive in overwhelming strength before the Mercatorian rescue squadron.

So Fassin is reluctantly conscripted into security forces, and enters the hell of Nasqueron's atmosphere to seek the magic key (code? signal frequency? equation?) that might save everything. Even at their most helpful and charming, though, Dwellers are maddeningly elusive. For ancients, they seem bumbling and whimsical, far more interested in hunting, kudos, and extreme sports like GasClipper Races or Formal War than in saving humanity's skin. Their ramshackle transport and awesome yet run-down floating cities suggest that Dweller legends of hypertechnology are sheer bluff. But are they keeping something dark?

Fassin's journeys and discoveries are exhilarating, witty, sometimes mind-boggling. Exotic weaponry abounds. The Dwellers are engagingly eccentric, like AI Minds in the Culture books--but the Mercatoria has banned artificial intelligence as Abomination, and this too is a plot strand. Additionally there are human revenge, intrigue and betrayal subplots; surprises and upsets; and the mother of all shaggy-dog revelations.

RELEASE NOTES:

Got this in the post today as part of a trade. Thanks very much Rianonne. Another 'wish list' wish fulfilled!

After a slow start, this just kept getting better and better. Once you immerse yourself in the world that Banks has so brilliantly created (a bit like the Seers immerse themselves - or 'delve' into - Dweller society) the plot becomes all important and, as usual, Banks doesn't disappoint. In amongst all the fantastic aliens and wonderous technology, there's a great story being told. Highly recommended.

I'm a big Iain M Banks fan, so asked my husband not to re-release this until I'd had a chance to read it too: about 9 months on, and I've finally started it...and almost finished it, as it's proving to be a gripping read.

Once again, Banks succeeds in truly immersing the reader in his universe. Whilst following the unpredictable story of a human protagonist, on his quest to find something which may or may not exist...which may or may not alter the universe for all life-forms... it's the journey, meeting fantastic and varied alien life-forms, that really makes this book a brilliant sci-fi.

Claimed this back from MrsMustard in order to release it.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Released at the Fourth Plinth meet up.