This was, I firmly believe, the very first novel that I have had the opportunity to read from the talented Iain Banks. In a nutshell, I ultimately found myself in a rather indecisive state regarding whether I liked it or not.

On one hand, this novel contained an abundance of truly great concepts and characters. The ideas presented were innovative and engaging, and the characters were vividly drawn and had the potential to be truly memorable.

However, on the other hand, there were simply far too many over-written scenes. These scenes seemed to have very little, if anything, to do with the main plot. Moreover, their function as characterisation pieces is highly doubtful. Additionally, the alien culture of the Dwellers, while initially seeming somewhat alien, was ultimately undermined by the fact that they did not seem very alien as individuals. Instead, they came across more like goofy humans in disguise.

With some careful editing, perhaps cutting down the length by a hundred or so pages at least, and another thorough rewrite, this novel might have had the potential to become a truly great read. As it stands, unfortunately, I have to keep the score down due to the unnecessarily slow plot progression and the somewhat underdeveloped ending.

I'm sorry this was gas.

It is indeed written in a rather wild and crazy style, with an abundance of made-up proper nouns that might seem like a soup of random words.

However, despite this, it also contains some truly crazy cool ideas and presents a world that is simply awesome.

The concept of the Dwellers, for example, is an insane one that somehow manages to work extremely well.

And I have a great deal of love for much of the other stuff regarding the politics of the galaxy.

I think I'm going to be delving into a fair bit more of Banks' works.

I'm eager to explore the unique and imaginative universes he creates, and to see what other crazy and wonderful ideas he has in store.

His writing, while perhaps a bit unconventional, has a certain charm and吸引力 that keeps me coming back for more.

I can't wait to see where his stories will take me next.

Banks returns to the widescreen space-opera genre in this non-Culture standalone. The story features the galaxy-spanning, multispecies, oxygen-breathing Mercatoria empire and its interactions with the more-numerous gas-giant Dwellers. The Dwellers seem to have colonized most of the jovians in the Milky Way and are extremely old. There are also exploding spaceships, adding to the excitement.

The Mercatoria power-structure is a rococo Raj-in-Space, with a fabulous court scene straight out of Victoria and Albert's coronation in India. It features characters like the Heirchon Ormilla, the Peregals Tlipelyn and Emoerte, First Secretary Heuypzlagger, and many other comic-opera-dressed reps of the Ascendancy, Omnocracy, Navarchy, etc. It's not an egalitarian democracy in space, but it looks positively enlightened compared to the Archimandrite Luseferous, a warrior-priest of the Starveling Cult of Leseum9, who is truly bad. Luseferous is coming to get Ulubis, a detached Mercatorial system that recently lost its wormhole due to enemy action.

The Algebraist macguffin initially strained the reader's WSOD, but the Dwellers, giant gas-dwelling ammonite-analogs who channel John Cleese (when not emulating soccer hooligans) and their party-hearty 'kudo' culture won the reader over. A human Deep-delver is sent to Nasqueron to find an ancient Dweller document written in alien algebra that reveals a deep, dark Dweller secret. Luseferous also gets wind of it, and Mercatoria Central knows that he knows, so they're sending a large fleet to fend him off.
The question remains: will the fleet arrive in time, and will the secret be found? It's seriously over-the-top Banks Light, with one silly space-chase after another. There's hardly a sag up to the near-inevitable Banks Downer Ending™, which is even more gratuitous than usual. The Algebraist could have benefited from some blue-pencil work to cut out some of the fat. However, it's still lots of fun and could have been better with just a bit more effort.
Algebraist has received a mixed reception, both here and elsewhere. The author isn't breaking new ground, but that doesn't matter. He's clearly having fun and still writing circles around most of his competition. Algebraist is comparable to Walter Jon William's recent "Praxis" space-operas: good clean fun, even if not the author's best work.

This was truly an extremely wide-ranging book that was brimming with a plethora of interesting ideas and musings.

Some of these ideas delved into what a species that had evolved in a gas giant might look like and how it would act, as well as how an interstellar civilization would function, among other fascinating topics.

However, the downside was that the vast majority of the aliens depicted in the book weren't really all that alien. In fact, you would observe far larger differences between various groups of humans than what was presented between the different alien races.

It was a unique mix of anthropology, politics, and old-fashioned science fiction. Despite its flaws, it was well-paced and definitely worth the time invested in reading it.

Overall, it offered a thought-provoking exploration of various concepts that could stimulate the imagination and spark discussions about the possibilities of life beyond our own planet.

I keep hearing about what a great author Iain Banks is.

This book was a book of the month last year for a reading group I belong to. However, I didn't like it at all. It had so much potential, but it was simultaneously underwritten and overwritten, if that's even possible.

Probably my biggest beef with the book was the liberal use of the f-word. Now, I'm not a prude and God knows that the use of the f-word has become very commonplace. When my husband is watching Mafia movies, I always tell him that the over-use of the f-word is the screenwriter's way of adding a lot of words without really saying anything. I think it's even more of a crutch to use the word in novels set in the far future. Thirty or forty years from now, people will read this book and think it's so locked in the first decade of this century. It would be like a book from 1968 using the word "groovy" throughout.

Now that I've got my language rant out of the way, I'll have to say that even without the liberal use of the f-word, I still wouldn't have liked this book. I had trouble telling the characters apart. I didn't care what happened to them. I just couldn't get a reasonably mental image of the aliens. The dialog was hard to follow because everyone, human and alien alike, talked the same way.

Maybe Iain Banks is as great a writer as his fans and the critics say, but I'm never going to find out. This book turned me off to reading anything else by him. It's a real shame because I was really looking forward to reading his work. But based on this experience, I don't think I'll be giving him another chance.

I have always had a deep love for the Sci-Fi genre ever since I was a child. However, as time went by, I noticed that the Fantasy genre seemed to have taken over, and it became increasingly difficult to come across truly outstanding and solid works in the Sci-Fi realm.

Recently, after returning from North America to the UK, I happened to discover this book in an airport bookshop. I thought to myself, "What the heck, a book that doesn't involve elves or dwarves. I'll give it a try."

I am extremely grateful that I did. This book is an absolute masterpiece, on par with Asimov's Foundation series and Dune. The descriptions of the various worlds within the story are simply breathtaking. For the very first time in many, many years, I found myself completely adrift in these wondrous galaxies, losing all sense of time and reality.

The Dwellers, a unique and thought-provoking race, added a great deal of fun and excitement to the narrative. While this book may not be to everyone's taste, I would wholeheartedly and strongly recommend it to anyone who desires to escape from our own galaxy and avoid being surrounded by the typical wizards, dragons, and other such elements that are so common in the Fantasy genre. It offers a fresh and captivating perspective on the Sci-Fi universe.

The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks is a captivating and intelligently crafted space opera. It takes readers on a journey across the galaxy, filled with adventure and intrigue.

Iain M. Banks is a talented writer who has a penchant for creating vivid and believable worlds. In The Algebraist, he introduces us to the Dwellers, a fascinating species that lives on gas giants. Their unique physiology and way of life add an interesting dimension to the story.

The plot revolves around Seer Fassin Taak, a young man trained in the study of the Dwellers. He is hired by the Shrievalty Ocula to determine the truth behind the Dwellers' claims of having access to a wormhole network. Along the way, he encounters various characters and faces numerous challenges.

Banks' writing style is engaging and descriptive, although some may find the length of the book a bit overwhelming. The detailed descriptions of the military ships, uniforms, and weaponry will appeal to fans of science fiction, but others may wish for more character development and less focus on these technical aspects.

Overall, The Algebraist is a well-written and enjoyable space opera that offers something for everyone. It may not be perfect, but it is definitely worth a read for fans of the genre.

WHO FUCKING CARES?!?! This exclamation seems to express a sense of frustration or indifference. It implies that whatever the situation is, no one really gives a damn.

AWFUL AND BAD! These words describe something as being extremely unpleasant or of poor quality. It could be used to describe a movie, a meal, or a situation.

WOOOHHOOOOO FUCKING FINALLY! This expression shows excitement and relief. It might be used when something long-awaited finally happens.

Overall, these phrases convey a range of emotions, from annoyance and dissatisfaction to excitement and celebration. They are often used in a more casual or vulgar context to emphasize the intensity of the feelings. However, it's important to note that using such language may not be appropriate in all situations.

The Dwellers are the Minds, just less friendly and even more advanced.

An evil antagonist, the Dwellers, and The Mercatoria. This one is different than the Culture novels, but uses the completely same trope mixture. An evil antagonist, mostly steampunky or technologically highly advanced but neo feudal torture nightmare state aka present reality in the Culture series, the Dwellers as the Minds and the Mercatoria as a spoiled and less advanced form of the Culture. The rest is business as usual, although it´s maybe even a bit funnier, because the typical Mind humor is now strange Dweller humor, who kind of care about nothing and tend to overreact or procrastinate.

The devil in the machine. The dangers of AI and what the best long-time approach is one of the key elements of this novel and an everlasting hot topic that might lead to some interesting real-life events. Of course, in a perfect universe, benevolent AIs would help happily evolving humans and aliens, forever peacefully and symbiotic united. But if any of those parties might be evil it could get exponentially nasty and, let´s face it, nothing beats an AI.

But without hell, there is no heat. But banning it after it nearly killed everyone damns the civilization to stagnation and loss of any technological progress in comparison to other aliens that use AI as a driving force of anything. Reducing the abilities of an AI to gain consciousness or to give it consciousness and incarcerate it in an escape-proof cyber prison, without cyborg bodies and networks to play with, may be an option, but it´s not able to remain competitive that way too.

Techno primitivism or technocrazy. So what to do with a pesky civilization that has chosen "Kill all AIs." as their mantra and logo when you are an AI or an alien race that wasn´t too stupid to integrate important preventive measures while developing AIs or still has some secret trigger hands in the background? Ignoring or preventing them from spreading might be the only options, because feeding those dull trolls by interacting with them might not be helpful.

Billion years old. How the longevity of a species might influence their view of the galaxy, intergalactic politics, social life and diplomacy is the second big topic. Million years of natural life with a childhood of a few hundred thousand years or something even closer to immortality may lead to apathy, arrogance, aggressive expansion, isolation, a god complex, etc., or even to something boring and positive outcomes. There is no real answer to this question and how a society deals with both godlike power and a never-ending life may be a question and mixture of culture, coincidence, and the motivation, technology, and mentality of the species they meet on their way to ultimate power.

So now we´re gods and what´s next? Finally, there is the question of what stays important for a species that has reached everything. When the universe is understood, no borders exist and every endless life can be lived free, probably just philosophy, wisdom, and the interest in giving little pieces of it to other species to help them evolve may be interesting hobbies.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

I will never know whether I would have liked this book 5 or 10 years ago.

A reread of some Culture novels will probably shed some light on that, but I cannot remember those books to have the problems I encountered here. Three and a half years ago I still liked Surface Detail, and I liked it a lot.

The Algebraist has drained my energy, and as a result I don’t even feel like writing a lengthy review – even though I usually like panning books that failed to connect with me. So let’s make it snappy.

There are two main reasons why this space opera tome didn’t work for me.

First, the plot was overly convoluted and difficult to follow. There were so many characters and subplots that it was hard to keep track of what was going on. Second, the world-building was not as engaging as I had hoped. The author seemed to be more interested in showing off his knowledge of science and technology than in creating a believable and immersive universe.

Overall, The Algebraist was a disappointment for me. I had high expectations for this book, but it failed to deliver. I would not recommend it to others.

Please read the full review on Weighing A Pig

That is hours and hours of my life that I will never be able to retrieve. My personal experience leads me to believe that this book is by far the most tedious book on the entire planet. (Alright, perhaps there are a few others that could potentially rival it in terms of boredom.) I simply cannot fathom, for the life of me, why it was nominated for a Hugo. However, I do have some friends who happen to like it, so I'm willing to admit that this particular book just wasn't to my taste.

There was also this rather strange secondary plot that seemed completely unnecessary. In a book that was already overly bloated with perplexing flashbacks, overly long sentences, an excessive use of commas, and side stories that never really amounted to anything, it appears that the author could have easily cut out quite a few things. In fact, a great many things.

The sole reason that I persisted in reading this extremely time-consuming book was that it was the 100th book that I had taken off the Sci-Fi and Fantasy group's bookshelf, and I didn't want to DNF (Did Not Finish) book number 100. But as it turns out, the joke was on me because I miscalculated, and "The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack" was actually number 100. So, I ended up not DNFing book number 101, and I really should be given a pat on the back because this book truly sucked.

I don't know.

To be honest, the writing in this piece is quite good. The concepts presented are grand and have the potential to be truly captivating.

However, once again, the plot is a bit strangely constructed. It seems unfocused, with an overabundance of unnecessary details that tend to detract from the overall narrative flow.

And this time, the bad guy is just ludicrous, as if he walked straight out of Galaxy Quest.

That being said, there are still enough elements here to provide moments of serious intellectual and visceral delight for the reader.

But then there are also great stretches of time where you find yourself struggling through the narrative.

Even with your Willing Suspension of Disbelief turned up to eleven, you still don't seem to be making much progress.

It's a bit of a mixed bag, really.