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The Algebraist

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The Algebraist

By: Iain M. Banks
Narrated by: Anton Lesser
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The novels of Iain M. Banks have forever changed the face of modern science fiction. With breathtaking imagination and extraordinary storytelling, they have secured his reputation as one of the most extraordinary and influential writers in the genre.

'Banks is a phenomenon' William Gibson

It is 4034 AD. Humanity has made it to the stars but 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 civilisation. 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.

Abruptly 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.

Praise for the novels of Iain M. Banks:

'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

'Jam-packed with extraordinary invention' Scotsman

'Compulsive reading' Sunday Telegraph

Books by Iain M. Banks:
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
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.©2004 Iain M. Banks Science Fiction Fiction War
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Critic reviews

There is now no British SF writer to whose work I look forward with greater keenness
Confirms Banks as the standard by which the rest of SF is judged
Explosive
Gripping, touching and funny
All stars
Most relevant
This is a book was written by someone from another galaxy, science fiction at its very best. Don't plan to do anything else when you start to listen to it, if you do you will be late.

The Agebraist

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I really enjoyed this book, but compared to the majority of the Banks catalogue it falls a bit short. Having read The Player of Games and the rest of the Culture series, I'd purposefully left the "other" SF alone and must say, a lot of the concepts in this book could easily have fitted into the Culture universe.

Anton Lesser does an exceptional job reading the book and adds a lot of flavour to it. I generally knee-jerk react to odd sound effects in audiobooks, but the chapter divisions are atmospheric and well produced. All in all, this is a great production.

I really wish that Audible would get its act together and beef up the catalogue of his other SF. I'd love to hear the audio version of PoG and Look to Windward.

Good but not Banks's best by a long way

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I read the book years ago & was really looking forward to the audio…. it took me a while to realise it was abridged (my fault, I should have noticed in the original blurb - will be more careful in future). Anyway, there was at least one subplot in the original book (the resolution of the death of Fassin’s female friend on the alien shipwreck in the early chapters) that isn’t resolved in the abridged version. Not the end of the world but I found myself waiting for half remembered episodes that never came.

There are lots of excellent reviews out there so in brief:
- I know it’s long but I really enjoy Banks’s extended sci-fi novels & certainly perfect listening for the recent long covid walks
- I didn’t think the narration was bad BUT it isn’t Peter Kenny
- Agee with most commentators that while Fassin is an agreeable character, the dwellers are the stars. Also enjoyed the fabulous awfulness of the Archimandrite….a perfect Marvel universe character!
Overall enjoyed listening but not one of the better audio versions of Banks’s novels

Abridged & suffers from it

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Couldn't finish as the narration just grated me.
Good story. Maybe it just my personal taste, or listened to too many Peter Kenny narrations, so expected better. Story seems ok, but does lack a certain something. Will try and read the book instead when I get time. Didn't finish the audio book.

Couldn't get past the lack luster narration.

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Very good read.

Classic sci-fi

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