My favourite book by a long shot.
Haven’t heard of this I’ll need to check it out.
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It’s on Apple so no one has seen it, which is a shame because it’s really good.
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I’m currently reading Dune also (page 359), and it does seem to be taking a while to read, but I’m really enjoying it so I don’t mind too much.
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Ok, I’ve finally finished it (3 weeks! And only because I pushed myself towards the end). I was enjoying it up until I last posted, just after the halfway point, but then it became a slog for the next quarter or so of the book, and then got a bit better by the end.
I was initially wondering whether I should track down the other books, but I think this one tired me out. I might just read their synopsis on Wikipedia or something!
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Took me literally months but I used to just put it down and forget about it for ages. Finished it this morning. It picked up towards the end but the last page was just utter garbage. No way I’ll ever read another one, will read the wikis too ha.
Gotta watch the Lynch film to find out how bad it is now in comparison.
I see the Lynch film is £2.49 on amazon to rent. Not sure if I particularly want to splash out on it…
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So this is probably going to be the best film ever eh?
Eh?
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Unreal cast. Can’t wait.
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ZENDAYA IS CHANI
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Really quite excited, as I’ve just realised that I have an Iain M Banks book (Against A Dark Background) which I haven’t read, but which was hidden away in my bookshelf of ‘read’ books. Will make a start on that tonight!
In other sci fi book news, I re-read and still loved Joe Haldeman’s Forever War. I then read the sequel, Forever Free, which started off mostly ok, but then got ridiculous and a bit of a disappointment. And then his Forever Peace book, which was only slightly related, but was surprisingly better than I was expecting.
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So I recently heard that they actually get better as they go along, assuming you stick only to the ones Frank Herbert wrote.
I really didn’t enjoy Against a Dark Background much TBH. But maybe I was just too young. It seemed very long and very meandering. I liked his other stuff by varying degrees, some a great deal.
Just finished it, and I think your assessment is correct. It started off interesting, but then just jumped about a bit too much with thing after thing, but none of it really making any logistical sense, and pretty much having no feelings towards any of the characters, especially by the end. I’ve enjoyed his other books quite a bit, but this is easily my least favourite by a long way. Glad I’ve finished it now anyhow!
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Yeah that sounds about right. I won’t rush to re-read it as an adult then! Although I gave all my Banks books to charity when I was paring down so I would have to buy them all again to do a re-read and that’s just a LOT of time and money.
It’s not one of his most coherent, but I still really like it and as always it’s got tons of ideas packed into it. It’s really a bunch of set pieces loosely connected together and I always find the last 50 pages a bit of a letdown, but I like Sharrow as a character, I do feel she holds it together. Just about.
It’s an early book, written before Consider Phlebas and (I think) even The Wasp Factory. I don’t know how much of a rewrite it got before publication, but you can tell it’s not as accomplished as his other stuff.
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Oh yeah, the last 50 pages were very disappointing. I had some hope of it having some kind of nice ending, but then I realised that wasn’t happening and I just wanted it over with.
I did like Sharrow, but mostly whenever any of the characters died or something happened to them then I wasn’t that fussed. Actually, I quite liked the android!
But they just made lots of ridiculous decisions, and not that scared of the consequences, and the special connection that all five of them were supposed to have didn’t actually do anything or make them noticeably any different from anyone else.
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That’s really interesting. I hadn’t considered it was an old one he got published later.
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The wiki page links to this Epilogue he wrote btw, not in the book
https://web.archive.org/web/20160305011808/http://culturelist.org/cdr/article.cfm?id=142
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