Paused

Excession: Culture Series, Book 5 Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Iain M. Banks (Author), Peter Kenny (Narrator), Hachette Audio UK (Publisher)

533 ratings

See all formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Amazon Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$12.99

—

Audible Audiobook, Unabridged

"Please retry"

$0.00

Free with your Audible trial

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$415.00

—

Paperback

"Please retry"

$19.99

$19.85

—

Mass Market Paperback

"Please retry"

$26.01

$23.68

—

Two and a half millennia ago, the artifact appeared in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe. It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared. Now it is back.

Read & Listen

Switch between reading the Kindle book & listening to the Audible narration with Whispersync for Voice.
Get the Audible audiobook for the reduced price of $31.21 after you buy the Kindle book.

Your choice of audiobook each month
Plus a free monthly audiobook chosen by our editors
Unlimited access to exclusive podcasts
After 30 days, Audible is $16.45/month. Cancel anytime

By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible’s Conditions Of Use and Privacy Notice.

Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company

People who viewed this also viewed

Page 1 of 1Start OverPage 1 of 1

Product details

Listening Length	15 hours and 55 minutes
Author	Iain M. Banks
Narrator	Peter Kenny
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com.au Release Date	07 March 2013
Publisher	Hachette Audio UK
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B00NXALPHG
Best Sellers Rank	10,910 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) 519 in Literary Fiction (Audible Books & Originals) 925 in Science Fiction (Audible Books & Originals) 1,944 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer reviews

5 star		69%
4 star		17%
3 star		7%
2 star		5%
1 star		2%

How are ratings calculated?

Review this product

Write a customer review

Top reviews from Australia

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Damian

Excessionly Complex!

Reviewed in Australia on 1 September 2020

Verified Purchase

The book is well written and entertaining. My minor complaint is that I couldn't really understand at all what is going on. People and ships are going here and there - its all a confused mess. Long sequences of Ship computers talking to eachother just add further confusion.

Helpful

Mr. M. Read

Great book, very compelling, slightly complex though

Reviewed in Australia on 23 September 2017

Verified Purchase

Hence the four stars, not 5. Minds play a big part in this book, there are a lot of them, and I found it difficult to tell them apart and remember their respective roles at times. Otherwise, though, the book was touched on some very interesting concepts and responses to them. Highly recommended.

Helpful

James

A fine read.

Reviewed in Australia on 6 August 2017

Verified Purchase

As always seems to be the case, Iain M Banks has wrought a, well written sci-fi adventure that fits in well with his epic Culture series.

Helpful

Cara Phillips

Slow build to an epic crescendo.

Reviewed in Australia on 5 January 2021

Verified Purchase

Great SciFi world building. Great drip feeding of information reveal a network of conspiracy. Excellent use of extreme examples to raise moral questions.

Helpful

Jackson Staub

Decent Banks Books

Reviewed in Australia on 14 November 2018

Verified Purchase

Good overall story but as per normal Banks books it can be a slow read for much of the book

Helpful

russell

Too slow

Reviewed in Australia on 31 May 2016

Verified Purchase

Lots of ideas. Cast of dozens. Way too slow. Never really engaged. Started speed reading half way through and gave up a short while later.

Helpful

Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in Australia on 3 May 2016

Verified Purchase

One of the better of this series. Great ending.

Helpful

Winter

They are just as funny, petty and psychotic as you secretly suspected

Reviewed in Australia on 6 January 2015

This book shines the light on the inner workings of the Minds. They are just as funny, petty and psychotic as you secretly suspected. Love, love, love this book!!!

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

falcorob

Another great Banks......

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 November 2018

Verified Purchase

Starts slowly and builds to a crashing finale. The subplots and characterisations are typical Banks and will keep you entertained for hours. The blasé acceptance of, and refusal to explain the workings for, the technology is also a trademark, and a welcome one at that. Who wants reams and reams of scientific mumbo jumbo about something that doesn’t exist and wouldn’t be viable within those parameters anyway?

I’m probably on my 5th or 6th reading of the series now and have to say that it doesn’t get any worse for that. If you love your Sci-Fi in the form of huge, galaxy encompassing adventures, then these are the stories for you.

11 people found this helpful

Fleecy Moss

Even better the second time around.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 May 2020

Verified Purchase

Next book in my decade re-read of the master himself & I loved it more than the first time, probably because I was able to see how the three streams knitted together into a final, incredible whole.

First off, the Affront are just brilliant – a caricature of every Wetherspoons’ lads party turned into a space capable civilisation, their adopted name a play on the description of them offered by the culture: teenages with big ships and bigger guns! It is genius that the Culture ambassador wants to be an Affronter even as he enjoys all the pleasures offered by the more mature Culture: a comment on moving from child to adult perhaps.

On first read, I found the “couple” relationship a bit boring but now I can see how it’s importance is more to do with ship itself, which brings in one of the key concepts of the Culture, that the Minds decided it was more of a challenge to keep humans around and happy than it was to wipe them out.

The conspiracy I still find a bit contrived, although I now recognise that again it links back to the same theme as the ambassador: do you allow an individual/culture develop themselves or do you intervene.

At the other end, we have the tables turned on the Culture themselves, when faced with something so beyond them that they are humbled, and ultimately judged in the same way that they have judged the Affront.

A classic so much better, perhaps because I also have made the same journey as an person, hopefully wiser ten years on.

Fleecy Moss, author of the Folio 55 SciFi fantasy series (writing as Nia Sinjorina), End of a Girl, Undon , and 4659 now available on Amazon.

One person found this helpful

Kindle Customer

Slighter than I recall

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 December 2018

Verified Purchase

I'm re reading the culture series and this has been the first disappointing book. It was the first culture book I bought on it's release and I recall it as being stronger than it is re reading it.

The Minds and their plotting is both hard to follow and the plot they are involved in seems trivial.

The ending is a giant deus et machina. Really; an adult came and stopped your fighting?

The Affront are excellent.

The human character's subplot is the biggest disappointment. Two unlikable, boring, self indulging idiots. I really didn't want to spend time with either of them

The Paige Rock subplot fizzles out.

Overall a bit of a mess of a book. That said a Banksian mess is still better than just about anything else out there. I recall enjoying it so it may work better on a first reading.

2 people found this helpful

J Jones

Superb! I Love This Book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 March 2020

Verified Purchase

Arrived on time & as described. I got this as been a while since I've read it but it's absolutely brilliant. I love the exchanges between the ships, the way Banks doesn't try to go into totally undecipherable science to explain how Culture vessels can go so fast, just takes it as read that they can with a bit of a nod to how they do it. Some sci-fi authors try to explain the science behind what they write, makes reading their books like wading thru treacle. Banks just states it, says how it's done & doesn't bore the living daylights out of you/leave you way behind when explaining the tech with reference to present theory. Funny, exciting, had me hooked & I've already read it before.

TWB

Sci-fi that deserves an audience beyond the genre cul-de-sac

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 November 2012

Verified Purchase

The egalitarian, interstellar society, the Culture faces the twin threat of a developing war and an `Excession'. The latter is described as the kind of event that has a similar effect on a civilisation that a full stop has on a sentence. In this instance it is an enigmatic, moon sized, black sphere that appears to be -circumstantially and impossibly- older than the universe itself. Against this backdrop a variety of sub-plots begin to collide including half-millennium old conspiracies, rogue star-ships and a four-decade long bout of depression.

I've always enjoyed Iain Banks' sci-fi. His contemporary fiction -whilst always entertaining- seems to suffer from being too much of its time; many of his early novels already seem a tad dated due to the many time-specific references. The same detail heavy descriptions, when applied to a sci-fi context, make his fantastical environments believable and relatable. That same creative and engaging world-building is on display here. This is an author completely and comfortably in control of his writing.

Now twenty-five years old, the Culture has become a rich playground for Banks. It has a texture and depth that is now so well established, he is able to develop themes with real finesse whilst developing a rollicking good plot. As ever, there is real wit in the names and exchanges of the Culture's genius artificial intelligences, the Minds. If anything, the wonderful wordplay and banter between these city-sized egos makes the human characters seem rather pallid and uninteresting and it is certainly the sections of the book featuring the meat based characters that dragged a little for me.

Nevertheless, this is a smashing addition to Banks' output. Lasers are fired, civilisations brought to the edge of extinction and between all that the moral limits of anarcho-democratic societies are explored, the extent to which the ends justify the means considered and the comparative relevance of personal and pan-galactic tragedy contrasted.

I suspect that you have to already be inclined toward books with spaceships and reactionary, right-wing societies composed of tentacle bearing aliens to really enjoy this novel. That seems a real pity as `Sleeper Service' is a more complex and captivating character than you would find in many literary works, despite being a seventy kilometre long rocket-ship. And I challenge anyone not to love a battleship called `A Frank Exchange of Views'.

6 people found this helpful

See all reviews

Excession: Culture Series, Book 5 Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Read & Listen

Free with Audible Trial $0.00

Pay with 1-Click $31.21

People who viewed this also viewed

Product details

Customer reviews

Review this product

Top reviews from Australia

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Free with Audible Trial

$0.00

Pay with 1-Click

$31.21