An earlier book by Iain Banks -- "The Player of Games" -- ranks as one of my all-time favorite science fiction tales, but this book doesn't meet that same high standard. Banks is fiercely creative, perhaps so determined to be freesh and new that he abandons excellent ideas, characters and situations too soon. He could profitably have mined the rich ore of "Player" for more stories, in my opinion. I hope he returns to that vein.

Release planned for Monday, November 25, 2002 at Naked Lounge coffee house, 15th & Q in Sacramento, California USA.

Find out why The Naked Lounge coffee house is a leading spot for Book Crossing exchanges in Northern California. Look on the shelf in the main room at 15th & Q Streets, Sacramento, seven days a week.

A "first find" for me! And a rather oblique novel it turned out to be. It did keep me guessing, and I did pick up on clues along the way as to how it might end; but it's another book in which I felt uncomfortably thrust into an incoherent, nightmarish world--although that does seem to have been the point. I rather enjoyed the chapters that follow the "Scottish-dialected" barbarian who goes to Hades and wreaks havoc.

Released on Sunday, December 08, 2002 at Starbuck's, Eureka Way in Redding, California USA.

Book's gone!