Details

Buy it now from Amazon

Matter

Orbit

List price: $25.99
Lowest new price: $6.50
Lowest used price: $3.46

Average customer rating: 3.5 stars

What makes Matter matter

Iain Banks stands far above many writers, science fiction or otherwise, because he is a master of wordcraft. He can compel you to turn the next page, make you love a character, or make you marvel at the sheer boundaries of his imagination because his writing is great. This puts him in a class of great writers and he just happens to delve into science fiction with this great talent. Among science fiction he stands among a precious few writers who can write with such sincerity, humor, depth, wonder, and skill that you forget it's science fiction. By that I mean that they create a world so credible and fun to be in that you become as much a part of it as the world we actually live in. Like Samuel R. Delaney, Ursula K. Le Guinn, and John Varley, you are taken in completely and given an amazing ride, and are ultimately told a great human story.

Matter is a vast epic journey filled with amazing technology, but is not overwhelmed by it. Banks borders on magical realism in a way, but takes it to the limits of what is imaginable in a novel. He is the Gabriel Garcia Marquez of the galactic set, a virtuoso of words with an imagination that spans deciaeons and millions of light-years. There are others who can imagine universes, but few who can render them in such warm, compelling, and lurid language. This is the work of a true master.

A Cartoon Screenplay...Banks owes us our money back

Just finished "Matter". Have read a number of Bank's previous works including other "Culture" novels.

Never before had I felt like I was wading through 500 pages of styrofoam packing peanuts only as a precursor to the storyline turning into a cartoon.

Sure, Science Fiction gives you almost limitless ability to invent the fantastic but I have always felt that the art lies in making those inventions believable. It seemed quite evident that this book was written under the duress of meeting a publisher's contract and the inventions were a tool to get to the page count quota...or Iain's drinking got the best of him here.

Bottom line...old and new Banks readers need to avoid this one as the former will be greatly disappointed and the latter will probably never go on to read some of his good stuff.

Great Read

Only reason I did not give this book 5 stars was the ending. As another reviewer noted it was abrupt and ruined the pace of the story being told. Otherwise, I thought Banks did a great job with this book.

aka "Djan and Fermin drive in circles for twelve hours"

This is far from Banks's best work. For fans it gives only a faint echo of what we've liked about the Culture. For newcomers it may put them off entirely, which would be a shame.

Two siblings, each accompanied by a sidekick, go on a long trip through the universe, both eventually arriving back at their home for an epic confrontation. They pass through many fantastic situations, showing Banks's considerable imagination of alternate worlds.

But we're left wondering why it really matters, for neither the heroes nor their enemies inspire much sympathy or have really plausible reasons for their actions. In a better book this might make them open-ended, ambiguous or mysterious but here it's just dull.

The characters are often being hauled around like interstellar luggage rather than moving themselves and this is metaphorically true too: they proceed through the book as if on a conveyor belt, past the colorful characters and situations, with little sense that they matter to either the protagonists or to us. (Even the word "protagonist" is a bit kind.)

As others have noted, The Algebraist has similar problems but in my opinion is more interesting. Canal Dreams shares exploration of people's darker motivations, and is much more interesting.

Banks has written that he keeps a notebook of interesting ideas that may someday fit into books. It seems like he's dumped that notebook into Matter with only the barest of plots or characterization, and it's not enough. It's not so much that the book is long, as that it doesn't have the backbone to support itself.

Boring.

I agree with many of the other reviewers who have noted that Banks could do with some editing. Although I have been reading his novels (both mainstream and sci-fi) since the early 90's, Matter is probably the weakest of his sci-fi works. The much referred to "complexity" of the plot stems from its overpopulation with unnecessary characters, and the endless pages describing the journeys of these unsympathetic individuals bored me senseless. Why should I care? Banks obviously doesn't.