Iain M. Banks has new book, and there was much rejoicing

The powerhouse of science-fiction that is Iain M. Banks has pumped out another Culture based novel called Matter. If you enjoy a good Science fiction novel or 30, then I fully recommend Iain M. Banks. His series of novels based around the decadent civilisation called The Culture is one of the best glimpses into and AI influenced future that I have ever read. He has also released several other Sci-fi non-Culture novels (Against a Dark Background, Feersum Endjun, The Algebraist) which are also excellent.

I recently finished reading The Algebraist and it was well written and thought provoking. I connected with the main characters, and found the alien races living in the gas giants a fascinating concept. He has an amazing way to describe an alien race that sounds unfathomable, and you are able to understand the human based races inability to deal with an alien culture.

Along with his Sci-Fi stuff he also releases standard Fiction novels under the name Iain Banks, all of which are interesting and thought provoking novels.

I will definitely be hooking into this one, but as a teaser see here for an extract and see below for the blurb.


In a world renowned within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a war. For one brother it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one - maybe two - people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, it means returning to a place she’d thought abandoned forever. Only the sister is not what she once was; Djan Seriy Anaplian has become an agent of the Culture’s Special Circumstances section, charged with high-level interference in civilisations throughout the greater galaxy. Concealing her new identity - and her particular set of abilities - might be a dangerous strategy. In the world to which Anaplian returns, nothing is quite as it seems; and determining the appropriate level of interference in someone else’s war is never a simple matter.