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As complex, turbulent and spectacular as the gas giant on which it is set, this novel from Iain M. Banks is space opera on a truly epic scale.

“An enormously enjoyable book, full of wonderful aliens, a sense of wonder and subtle political commentary on current events.” –Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

It is 4034 AD. Humanity has made it to the stars. Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year.

The Nasqueron Dwellers inhabit a gas giant on the outskirts of the galaxy, in a system awaiting its wormhole connection to the rest of civilization. In the meantime, they are dismissed as decadents living in a state of highly developed barbarism, hoarding data without order, hunting their own young and fighting pointless formal wars.

Seconded to a military-religious order he’s barely heard of – part of the baroque hierarchy of the Mercatoria, the latest galactic hegemony – Fassin Taak has to travel again amongst the Dwellers. He is in search of a secret hidden for half a billion years. But with each day that passes a war draws closer – a war that threatens to overwhelm everything and everyone he’s ever known.

“Banks is a phenomenon…writing pure science fiction of a peculiarly gnarly energy and elegance.” –William Gibson

“Banks writes with a sophistication that will surprise anyone unfamiliar with modern science fiction.” –The New York Times

For More from Iain M. Banks, check out:

The Culture series:
Consider Phlebas
The Player of Games
Use of Weapons
The State of the Art
Excession
Inversions
Look to Windward
Matter
Surface Detail
The Hydrogen Sonata

Genre:

Series:

Culture

“Banks is a phenomenon...writing pure science fiction of a peculiarly gnarly energy and elegance.”
William Gibson
“Banks writes with a sophistication that will surprise anyone unfamiliar with modern science fiction.”
The New York Times
“An enormously enjoyable book, full of wonderful aliens, a sense of wonder and subtle political commentary on current events.”
Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) on The Algebraist
“Banks never lets up in a dizzying array of characters, mind-bending ideas, and dazzling action.”
Booklist
“Few of us have been exposed to a talent so manifest and of such extraordinary breadth.”
New York Review of Science Fiction
“[Banks] can summon up sense-of-wonder Big Concepts you've never seen before and display them with narration as deft as a conjuror's fingers."
scifi.com
"Nobody does it better."
Times (UK)
"Banks writes space opera on the grand scale: he measures time in eons, space in lightyears, tragedies in gigadeaths."
Time

On Sale: Apr 2, 2024
Page Count: 704 pages
Publisher: Orbit
ISBN-13: 9780316565585

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Iain M. Banks

About the Author

Iain Banks came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, The Wasp Factory, in 1984. Consider Phlebas, his first science fiction novel, was published under the name Iain M. Banks in 1987 and began his celebrated ten-book Culture series. He is acclaimed as one of the most powerful, innovative and exciting writers of his generation.

Learn more about this author