Inversions

by Iain M. Banks

Book Overview

An engrossing portrait of an alien world and two very different people bound by a startling and mysterious secret from the internationally bestselling author of The Player of Games and Consider Phlebas Iain M. Banks.

On a backward world with six moons, an alert spy reports on the doings of one Dr. Vosill, who has mysteriously become the personal physician to the king despite being a foreigner and, even more unthinkably,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1982156104
• ISBN13: 9781982156107
• Release Date: December 2023
• Publisher: Gallery Books
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.3" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Fantastic

Wonderful wonderful wonderful. Iain Banks has to be one of the best sci-fi authors at this time. I would not suggest reading this as your first 'Culture' novel (try 'Player of Games' or 'Look to Windward') but this is a fantastically refreshing attempt at dealing with the other side (or the recieving end) of the Cultures main pre-occupation - how to deal with developing worlds and civilizations.Its also a love story and a classic romp in a pseudo-medieval setting.

A puzzle wrapped in an enigma.

I liked this novel for its richness of plot and mystery. For anyone familiar with Banks' Culture novel, it will be obvious that the two protagonists are from the Culture. They have a disagreement as cousins growing up together about whether pre-contact civilizations should be left alone or should be meddled with so that they find the true path out of the scarcity stage of planetary evolution. So the cousins decide to put it to the test. The female becomes a doctor to a king and manipulates him into egalitarian beliefs while the male becomes the protector to the rival king and keeps Culture ethics out. Both have plots against them which they deal with in ways consistent with their beliefs. The doctor by using Culture technology and the protector by adopting the native ways. All this background is gleaned obliquely through childrens' stories, journals and histories written by the natives. You soon come to realize that the doctor has robot spies and kills her enemies with knife missiles and cures patients with high tech potions. The protector wins by being a swashbuckler. But their covers are so masterfully designed that they fool the reader into doubting if they are Culture or not. In the end, the doctor fails in her mission and goes back to the Culture, displaced out into space. The protector goes native, perhaps staying to marry one of his king's concubines. Like other Banks novels, events happen that are puzzling until you collect and put together clues -- not always an easy task. An even more complex novel is his "Use of Weapons." I hope I do not spoil the story for you by revealing some of the plot but I feel you will be more entertained by puzzling less on "just what the hell is going on here." I probably would not have enjoyed it as much if I was not familiar with Banks' universe.

Two stories. Two books.

_Inversions_ is actually not one, but two books.I'm not saying that because it goes back and forth from two different narratives that mirror each other. I'm saying that because it is, really, two different books.If you've read the Culture novels (_Consider Phlebas_, _The Player of Games_, _Use of Weapons_), you'll understand things differently than if you haven't. If you've read the Culture novels, it will be pure science-fiction. If you haven't, it will be pure medieval fantasy. Anyway, it will be a very enjoyable read.That's Iain M. Banks for you.People argue whether this is a Culture novel or not. Simply put, it is. And no, that's not a spoiler. It's a very obvious Culture novel -- only without the space opera pyrotechnics.If you are new to Iain M. Banks, this is as good a place to start as any. If you have access to the other Culture novels, though, I'd suggest starting with them. Any will do. But do read them, Banks is a genius.

It's really inverted!

This is a subtler work than Banks' earlier "Culture" novels, and may be his best one yet. Regrettably, the very subtlety and understatement that makes this such a good book may narrow its appeal. You have to think about this book. For instance, one of the reviewers (Booklist) clearly either didn't read, or failed to understand what he was reading. Whatever Dr. Vossil and DeWar's relationship may have been, they were most assuredly not "cooperating". For the benefit of those who haven't read the book, I don't want to give away too much. However, one of the questions that's been kicked around on the Iain Banks newsgroup is which of the two is the starry-eyed idealist, and which is a hard-eyed pragmatist. My view? --If special circumstances demand that it absolutely, positively has to be destroyed overnight, if you send in Madame Doctor.No, this is not just a "medieval fantasy". It's a thought-provoking book about what it means to "do good", and how little latitude you have to help people in a cruel world. If it matters to you, this IS science fiction, and it IS a "Culture" book.

Banks Back In Fine Form

After the rather disappointing "A Song of Stone", his last novel to be released in the USA, Iain Banks has finally returned to this side of the Atlantic with another of his more typically engaging and complex narratives. If you have read Banks' earlier science fiction novels that elaborate Culture themes, you should immediately recognize and appreciate the subtle introduction of highly advanced and evolved Culture philosophy and technology to the low tech setting of this book. Chapters alternate between the twin tales of two seemingly unconnected protagonists, who reside in different warring nations on an alien planet with double suns. One state is ruled by a Cromwell-like regicide, the other by a moderately progressive monarch. Indeed, the lives of the two main characters, one a resented, yet capable female physician to the king, and the other a tough, enigmatic bodyguard to the protector, were once closely intertwined when they were younger and lived on an idyllic Culture world together, as one of the bodyguard's stories-within-the-story reveals. Yet on this somewhat primitive and brutal planet inhabited by fractious factions in a largely pre-mechanized stage of development, societies are composed of either wealthy and privileged nobles or wretched peasants in abject squalor, side by side. The two Culture exiles each experience their separate exotic adventures unknown to each other, in parallel but always different, "inverted" realities, which are nonetheless still obliquely interrelated. All in all quite satisfying, if edgy, conclusions to the tales of both main characters are reached, as loose ends are neatly tied up and ambiguities resolved for the careful reader. Fans of Banks will be well pleased with this refreshing and unique variation on familiar motifs.