My response to hearing of the passing of Iain Banks was to go out and get another book of his to read. This one lacks the "M." in the author name, so technically, it's not science fiction, though it does dive into alternate history/universe territory.

So, what if there was a powerful multinational corporation that had been in existence since before the Roman Empire (which it actually owned for a brief period of time), which was now interested in acquiring a country in order to have a seat in the UN? That's the underlying supposition in The Business (decidedly NOT "The Firm".)

I listened to this on audio, with one of my favorite voice actors, and the first bit was simply marvelous. It's a voice conversation between the main character, Kate, and a colleague Mike, who has just awakened after being drugged, to find about half his teeth randomly pulled. All this on the morning before he was to fly out for a high profile meeting with a powerful executive The Business has been been wooing.

The story that follows was quite compelling. Banks wrote from a woman's point of view and did it without embarrassing himself or women in general.

An author to be missed, to be sure, but luckily, he left us a legacy of reading.

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