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Iain M. Banks

Feersum Endjinn Hardcover – 9 June 1994

by Iain M. Banks (Author)

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Hardcover, 9 June 1994

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FREE delivery: 9 - 22 April

In the penultimate year before the Encroachment, the dimming sun still shines on the cloud-high weathered walls of Serehfa Fastness. On the day the Count Sessine dies for the final time, the chief scientist to the clan Accounts/Privileges receives a summons from the office of the High Sortileger.

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Product details

Publisher : Orbit (9 June 1994)
Language : English
Hardcover : 279 pages
ISBN-10 : 1857232356
ISBN-13 : 978-1857232356

Customer Reviews:
177 ratings

Product description

About the Author

Iain Banks came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, THE WASP FACTORY, in 1984. He has since gained enormous popular and critical acclaim for both his mainstream and his science fiction novels.

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5 star		58%
4 star		23%
3 star		10%
2 star		6%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from Australia

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Philip Rhoades

Another excellent Banks story

Reviewed in Australia on 29 January 2020

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I suppose I am biased by how much I love The Culture series books but this is still an excellent Banks story with all the usual creativity and brilliant prose.

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Amazon Customer

Five Stars

Reviewed in Australia on 5 September 2015

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Engaging, challenging, thoughtful and rewarding.

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Anakina

A demanding read but not rewarded by the ending

Reviewed in Australia on 28 August 2014

I don’t have a happy relationship with cyberpunk or it is more correct to say that, so far, I’ve rarely been able to find books in this sub-genre of science fiction that were congenial to my own mind. I don’t think that is cyberpunk’s fault, which indeed addresses definitely tasty issues, but I imagine that I came across some wrong books. “Feersum Endjinn” is largely one of them, even if I haven’t completely disliked it.
I won’t talk about the plot in this review, as perhaps the most beautiful thing is to immerse themselves in the universe created by the author without knowing anything and be surprised by the wonders born from his imagination. I prefer to concentrate on how it is written and try to figure out why I didn’t like all of it.
I appreciated the choices made by Banks in the use of narrative techniques, but not quite how he put them into practice. Carrying forward separate plot lines of a story to rejoin them in the end is a challenge. Unfortunately, this prevents from providing the reader with a well-defined protagonist. Each of the main characters of the single plot lines has everything it takes to be appreciated by the reader, but the fragmented way in which they are presented makes the reader lose the special connection that is created between the latter and the protagonist or another main character to which they tend to become attached. This is accentuated by the fact that some of these characters have no depth, are almost evanescent. You have the constant feeling of reading separate stories, almost like different books set in the same universe, but not all at the same quality level. This tends to be confusing, especially at the beginning of the reading, but then things get better, especially if like me you are used to make parallel readings and are able to keep them alive at the same time in your mind.
Another element of difficulty is the choice to tell the story narrated by Bascule, one of these main characters, using phonetic spelling (I’m talking about a quarter of the entire novel). You need to hear his words in your mind to understand them. Surely it is a brave and very original choice. On the practical side, though, since I love to read also to improve the use of language (whether Italian or any other language in which I read) I’ve found it simply annoying and I’m sorry about that, because the character of Bascule is the best narrated throughout the novel, as he tells his story in first person and does so with considerable irony.
Beyond these aspects, as I said, the way in which the story is told wasn’t so bad at all. While reading you begin to see the connections between the various plot lines and a feeling of waiting is created for an ending that promises great revelations.
And here is the main problem. After a series of exciting action scenes all of a sudden you get to the ending that seems to appear from nowhere, without solving anything!
Unfortunately, a good book with an ending that does not work, as far as I’m concerned, stops being good. What a pity.

Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli, author of Red Desert - Point of No Return

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Top reviews from other countries

Mr. T. O. Brand

Good - but not Banks' best work

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 February 2017

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First, let me preface this by saying Iain M Banks is (or was) probably my favourite sci-fi author I've ever read. I've read most of his Culture novels now and the whole series, taken together, is superb. However, I personally found this addition to the series a little underwhelming. For every positive, there is something which lets it down. For example - of the 4 different narratives, I found 2 of them a little underdeveloped and the way they tied them together at the end was underwhelming.

Equally, some of the earlier threats don't seem to really come to a head, and the ending was a bit of an anti-climax. Certainly compared to most other books by Banks, which usually result in a fairly bleak/surprising/epic finalé.

My favourite character was the young chap who spoke in a strange, phonetic language - but again, there was no real explanation why this was the case (I'd be very interested to hear some fan theories what the reason was!)

I can wholeheartedly recommend all of Bank's books, both Culture and non-Culture, but this was personally my least favourite of the dozen or so I've read so far.

4 people found this helpful

E. P. Lowis

Disappointed

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 August 2020

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I should have heeded the implied warning in the title! The phonetic chapters were initially ‘clever’, but quickly became a barrier, slowing down my reading. Also, the development of some of the other characters was nowhere near as good as his other books. I wasn’t hooked; the outcome was inevitable/ took forever to achieve, and I skipped chunks to get to the end, but doubt I missed much.
Succeeded in leaving me annoyed! A rare state only equalled by the Luminaries...

Amazon Customer

The master at his best

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 May 2014

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I admit it I am an Iain M. Banks fan. I think his stories are just the perfect mix of engaging narrative, world building and humour. His characters are always three dimensional and realistic. Their actions are consistent and they always feel at home in their environment. At his best, I don't think anyone could touch him and even his low points are a cut above the standard Sci-fi fare. This book is set in a far future earth abandoned by the majority of humanity. The protagonists are a dead army general, a young man on a quest to find his pet ant and a woman who has been born fully grown to compete a task she is unaware of.
This book is not a simple read it demands attention from the reader and some imagination. Large sections of the book are narrated by Bascule the Teller and written phonetically in the first person. The phonetic transcription and short-cuts are similar to text-messaging and in my head, it had the flow of a cockney accent. This just adds to the fun and enjoyment of the book. The plot twists and turns as the main characters try to save earth from "the encroachment"!
A great read.

2 people found this helpful

Mike McShed

A challenging read - but an amazingly inventive plot

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 June 2017

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A challenging read - expect to get through at least half the book before you have any idea what is going on, and to encounter chapters written in a kind of shorthand which you have to read carefully line by line. But as is usual with this author, an amazingly inventive plot and a reasonably happy ending.

2 people found this helpful

Dan Crawford

Rewarding, but utterly baffling

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 June 2012

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This is a book that must be approached with a little reverance, partly for what it achieves, and partly because of the difficult journey in getting there.

I am quite a fan of Banks' Sci Fi, and always find that time improves them. Having just finished it, I would give this book 3 stars, but know it will creep its way up to 4 in a week or so.

Feersum Endjinn fits closest to Surface Detail. Four seperate stories finding their way to an eventual unifying story. This is a harder book to read, because, whereas Surface Detail's unifying story begins to take shape about half way through, Feersum Endjinn doesn't get there until the last fifty pages (in fact the title only makes sense in the last sentence). This is a book which leaves us with the cliffhanger of a hairy pair of legs , a snake and three heads peering at the main character, and then returns 30 pages later to explain that this is a Mammoth (plus trunk) with a bird and a monkey on its back! A quarter of the book is also written phonetically ("Ah bitt liyke thees"), which will grate and then eventually warm on you.

Iain M. Banks's baffling visual style is always rewarding ("Eh?... [5 pages]... Oh!"), and, (refernce: Nabokov) always like a small literary chess game between writer and reader. Here, though, there is more of the baffling, and new readers would be advised to start with Use Of Weapons or Player of Games. If you know Banks, then you will be more likely to press on when the urge comes over you to put it down.

The end does make it worthwhile, however, and if I've seemed a little critical, I probably won't be next week.

Dan Crawford

2 people found this helpful

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Feersum Endjinn Hardcover – 9 June 1994

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