Against A Dark Background: Iain M. Banks

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It works rather less well than some of his other stylistic conceits, like in Use of Weapons or Surface Detail. The story occasionally feels a tad episodic as Sharrow runs from one disaster to the next, and the ending, which doesn’t do the book’s build-up justice, left me a little disappointed. Each was, in itself, worthwhile, and compelling once underway, but the transitions nevertheless loosened the novel's grip on me. If you're not already a fan of Banks, I'd recommend this to fans of Firefly, Killjoys, Saga and (dare I say it?

Banks was great, he had some amazing, literate story-telling ability with a kind of skewed oddness and weirdness (along with humour) that made him such a unique author who was taken from us far too soon, but did leave behind such a volume of literature, no small feat. She lay in the shrubbery, cradled on her back by the creaking branches and surrounded by gently glowing leaves. but only because of they're both science fiction heist stories") but I thought it was more like The Sting with lasers. It wore an expression of delighted surprise on its face for the time it took for her to get into the car, start it and drive off down the road, one hand waving from a window and the little girl twisting round in her seat and staring back through the rear screen and waving too. The 'Dark Background' in question is that the solar system in this novel is stuck at the arse end of nowhere and there is no FTL technology.

drawers for old material after the success of his other sci-fi works like Consider Phlebas and The Player of Games.

All his books are good; I believed that Feersum Endjinn was an intelligent book, but 'Against a Dark Background' now takes lead - much more in depth. Spoiled Brat: Sharrow as a child and teenager; filled with resentment about the death of her mother and indulged by a father she had no respect for due to his losing ways, the child Sharrow sounds like an obnoxious little brat.

She was nearly home, and she hated going into the house with the hiccups; Dloan always made fun of her. It's more fun to read than some, thanks to some larger-than-life Dickensian characters that leave lasting impressions: The blowhard old scholar Travapeth on Miykenns, the barbaric King Tard the 17th, the smugly ambitious bureaucrat Lebmellin, and above all, the solipsist Elson Roa. In the confusion, Sharrow kills first her half-sister Breyghun and then Geis, before leaving in the tank, self-identifying with the Lazy Gun and the destruction that it brings to everything it encounters. What does Peter Kenny bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

Now, to say this is the weakest Banks I’ve read means that it is still better than 95% of everything that’s out there, so there’s that. Every possible religious, political and philosophical system has been tried and tried again (and Banks has great fun with many of them as the scene shifts chapter after chapter - the Solipsists might be my personal favourite).Sharrow still suspected these theories were wrong and the explosion had been the Lazy Gun's work, but there was no easy method of proving the matter either for or against, and she wasn't sure that it really made much difference anyway. Iain Banks has always been a favourite author for me and this novel is typical of his unique style and sheer imagination which never ceases to amaze me! Banks is a phenomenon' William Gibson Lady Sharrow was once the fearless leader of a combat team in one of the sporadic little commercial wars in the vicinity of the planet Golter. Its been a few years since I read it (the detail is all gone, apart from "Dont point the Lazy Gun at the Sun and pull the trigger") but I do remember it being a great road trip/heist/war movie, brilliant travelogue in this wonderfully twisted and baroque civilisation (and its distressingly high radiation levels) but the ending kinda slumped. The main character Sharrow is part of a noble family often involved in private wars within the system.

Created by a lost civilization, no one understands how these guns work, only that when fired they frequently destroy their target in a random way whose ridiculousness is inversely related to the size of said target.Considering that the Huhsz are the motivators for the story, it seemed to me they figured in an almost incidental way. A "Useless King" that spends money excessively on useless things to avoid too much technological advancement in his country. Single Line of Descent: Sharrow is the last of the female line of the Dascen family, which the Huhsz cult has pledged to wipe out. A cult is responsible for the death of Sharrow's mother and the contract on Sharrow's life, while many other cults with strange beliefs and practices are encountered during the novel.