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The Algebraist

Night Shade Books

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Average customer rating: 4 stars

A Seer's Search

Fassin Taak is a Seer. A human who's job it is to delve into the heart of the gas giant Nasqueron and interact with the native alien species there...the Dwellers. The Dwellers are old. Their species having been around for something on the order of ten billion years. Add to this that individual Dwellers can live to be at least two billion and what you get is a species that has seen an awful lot. Fassin's job is to get as much information out of the Dwellers as possible. But the Dwellers are notoriously difficult to get information out of...at least information that is of any value.

Fassin has lived his entire life in the Ulubis system. Home to Nasqueron and its Dwellers as well as multiple worlds settled by various species...including humans. The Ulubis system is part of the Mercatoria, a socio-political structure that controls much of the galaxy.

Now Fassin must undertake a delve into the heart of Nasqueron in search of information that may be so valuable that it could shake the very foundations of the Mercatoria and galactic society.

The Algebraist was an intriguing tale. Banks does a wonderful job of sketching out the eccentricities of the Dwellers and their life in the gas giant Nasqueron. I wish Banks had given us even more, had further refined Dweller life...the most interesting parts of the book were when Banks did delve into "ordinary" Dweller life. Setting the book back some had to be Banks' prose...it was just too clunky and long-winded at times. The Algebraist is the first book I have read by Banks...I don't know if this cumbersome text is part of Banks' inimitable style or whether The Algebraist stands alone with this quality. The story also tended to be a bit slow in the first half, not really picking up until the second.

Overall however, The Algebraist was an enjoyable first jaunt into a Banks tale and was more than worthy to spur me onto to other stories written by this author in the future.

(Near) Perfect Space Opera

This book is almost perfect. The writing is is crisp and descriptive. The story unique one for a (very) well-trodden field. The protagonist someone easy to identify with. The issue, finding the algebraic equation that unlocks a mystery held secret for 8 billion years, is very appealing.

The ending ... well, the ending doesn't match the promise of the setup, I'm afraid. Too easy, too predictable ... unfortunate. However, the book still gets 5 stars from me on basis of everything else.

Slow to start but worth the wait for space opera fans

A distant future anthropologist whose studies inadvertently uncover the clues to saving his star system from invasion becomes wrapped up in the search for a miracle, encountering numerous alien cultures and social-political interests along the way. Although the book falters a bit in the early pages by establishing additional unecessary storylines, it eventually settles into a satisfying mix of action and humor, with some fairly original ideas about intelligent life in the universe and possible futures for human kind. Some great revelations throughout, with a truly evil nemesis in the Archimanderite Luseferous (what a name).

Banks has a lighter, funnier tone with dialogue that others in the genre (Hamilton, Vinge, Reynolds) that may seem a bit to modern-day, but actually works quite well within the other far-distant future themes.

Surprisingly Good

I found the Algebraist very hard to put down, with some very interesting twists at the end of the book.

Is it an opera because of how it drags?

I'm not entirely sure what a space opera is supposed to be. If this book represents the ideal then I'll never read another one. The story was a combination of insteresting elements interwined with numbing plot lines which either went nowhere or left me completely unfulfilled. If this was intentionally part of a sequential interlinked series, then I could perhaps understand the way some of it was presented. I don't believe that's the case, though. I don't mind a slow build to a story, but this was like a series of slow builds, and some of them never finished building. I don't find myself inclined to read anymore by this author on the basis of this experience.