It's all a bit too much, isn't it? I mean, every page—sometimes every paragraph on every page—of The Algebraist throws in an avalanche of new names. There are planets, principalities, and vast empires;

lost races and common aliens with endlessly inventive forms, habitats, and abilities;

unheard-of technologies, world-sized starships, and robots smaller than grains of sand, automated castles, weapons of both mass and intimate destruction;

clans, clades, and clubs; cross-generational romance;

bizarre medicines, foods, drugs, and sensations. It's truly exhausting!

And, perversely, this very flood of specificity seems to have made this particular book less memorable, at least for me. I recognized bits here and there, but the plot as a whole (and, for a long time, even the Big Reveal) rather evaded me on second reading.

This overwhelming, mind-blanking quality (as if I were a Banks character myself, always having my memories tampered with) prevents me from being as enthusiastic about this book as I might otherwise be. For it is a great and sweeping tale, a science fiction mystery with a mathematical bent (as one might guess from the title), a space opera whose conflicts range from the grandest to the most intimate scale.

Fassin Taak is at the center of it all. A Slow Seer whose expertise is in communicating with the Dwellers, a whimsical gas-giant native species whose individual members measure their lifespans in billions of years. The Dwellers whom Fassin Taak studies live within the turbulent atmosphere of Nasqueron, the largest such gas giant in the Ulubis system. Fassin's home is on 'glantine, one of Nasqueron's more habitable moons, where he is a member of Sept Bantrabal, one of the more successful groups of Seers. (See how complicated this is getting already? And we're really not even scratching the surface!)

The Dwellers seem like capricious, frivolous dilettantes to the humans and other "Quick" species who slow their metabolisms and Delve into the atmosphere of Nasqueron to interview and study them (when they're allowed to). Their long history and inquisitive nature lead them to collect an immense amount of information that is of historical and sometimes even scientific interest. But the Dwellers are also rotten catalogers, with all of their various collected libraries being a hodgepodge of unindexed, disorganized records. The Seers try to tease a few threads of order from the chaos.

That's really all Fassin Taak wants to do. But he's due to be yanked out of his complacent, contemplative work for Sept Bantrabal because Fassin is also a citizen of the Mercatoria, the star-spanning Human civilization (well, mostly Human) which has successfully eradicated rogue AIs and connected hundreds of Earthlike planets in a faster-than-light network of Arteria, the paired wormholes through which interstellar travel is essentially instantaneous. Wormhole networks are easily disrupted, though. One of the reasons why Ulubis is such a Galactic backwater is that its own wormhole connection to the rest of the Galaxy was destroyed a few centuries earlier, necessitating a replacement be sent from the nearest connected star system by the Mercatorian Engineers who are the only ones allowed to create and maintain these particular bits of critical infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the self-styled Archimandrite Luseferous, an Evil Genius in the classical mode (inventive methods of torture; giant leeches in the dungeon; an obsession with ranked battle cruisers and other such ostentatious military toys) has cast his eye on the isolated Ulubis system as the next—the one hundred and eighteenth, to be exact—to join his Starveling Cult. His fleet is on its slow way towards Ulubis too.

And why all of this interest in what really is, on a Galactic scale, the equivalent of a sleepy little college town? Well, that's the thing that ties all of these elements together. Supposedly, somewhere in all of that vast collection of data the Dwellers hold dear might be a clue to the Dweller List, which might be a trick, or a myth, or it might just be a comprehensive list of a few million wormholes that the Mercatoria and other Quick civilizations could use. If they could just find them.

The Dweller List is the deceptively simple McGuffin that drives Banks' ornate engine of plot. And in the end, I enjoyed the drive Banks took me on using that engine—twice. So, not such a bad ride after all.

Ah dear.

Where should one even begin to discuss this? There are all the blatantly obvious aspects. The main 'plot' consists of a tiresome wild goose chase around the galaxy. After this, the protagonist, much like in a typical fairy tale coming of age story, realizes that he had the key within him all along. The villain is such a caricature that it's almost laughable. Set up as an extremely powerful and fearsome character, he makes only a brief cameo at the supposed climax of a secondary plot that was meant to hinge on the primary plot but was actually rather pointless.

Great galactic races invest an incredible amount in the pursuit of 'hunches' about information that may or may not even exist in the first place. There is an incredibly large cast of characters, of which only two actually seem three-dimensional. One of those two is killed off in a pointless flashback that is supposedly motivation for one of the secondary (tertiary? quaternary?) characters. The other is a Beyonder spy with an amazing setup who ultimately does nothing more than sleep with a couple of the characters and meander around between the various factions. And those two play such minor roles that they are inconsequential.

The complete lack of tension throughout the novel is also a major flaw. Most of the 'tense' moments are simply resolved by the Dwellers destroying someone in a ridiculously simple way.

All of these things bothered me, indeed. But let me just focus on one point that may seem trivial at first glance but completely ruined the whole novel for me. The Dwellers. They are a race with an astounding longevity, with individuals living for billions of years. And they are supposed to experience the universe at a different speed than the more human-like species. However, this is not the case. Most of the time, they just bumble around in real-time, like parodies desperately trying to be something more than even the palest of pale imitations of Douglas Adams' creations. 'Slow time' is an option they choose when they're bored? And to make matters worse, a race whose members are all said to be at least millions of years old participates in frequent chivalric wars, with many casualties. Can someone please explain to me how individuals can survive for millions, or even billions, of years when the attrition rate is artificially increased? For example, based on the fatality rate from car accidents in the US, a citizen has a 1 in 10,000 chance of dying every year. This means that if Americans were all granted immortality (heaven forbid), the average life expectancy would still be only 10,000 years. And that's if that were the only way to die!

The reason this bothers me so much is that it indicates very poor world building. The novel is a collection of half-baked ideas that, when thrown together, result in a disjointed adventure through the galaxy in an attempt to tell a story that ultimately turns out to be rather pointless.

It's a shame too, as there did seem to be the beginnings of something amazing.

Oh well.

I'm extremely bored. I have been grappling for days just to make it through the initial 100 pages. By the way, the plot of the book doesn't even start to unfold until page 100. There are indeed certain elements within this book that have the potential to be interesting. However, there are simply far too many other books that I have a genuine desire to read. I don't want to waste my precious time on something that I'm having such a hard time getting into. It feels like a never-ending struggle, and I'm constantly debating whether to just give up and move on to the next book on my list. The thought of spending more time on this book when there are so many other exciting options available is really quite unappealing.

I absolutely loved my reread of this wonderful book.

The story is crafted with such a beautiful and intricate structure that it keeps you engaged from start to finish.

It is filled with some really hilarious moments that had me laughing out loud on numerous occasions.

One of the aspects that I truly adore is the wide variety of diverse alien races.

Each race has its own unique characteristics, cultures, and behaviors, which adds a rich and fascinating layer to the story.

It's like exploring a whole new universe filled with endless possibilities and surprises.

Rereading this book has been a joyous experience, and I can't wait to share it with others and see their reactions.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves science fiction and enjoys a well-written story with a touch of humor and a whole lot of imagination.