The Algebraist

By: Iain M. Banks

Narrated by: Geoff Annis

Length: 24 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

For short-lived 'quick' races like humans, space is dominated by the complicated, grandiose Mercatoria, whose rule is both military and religious. To the Dwellers who may live billions of years, the galaxy consists of their gas-giant planets - the rest is debris.

Our human hero, Fassin Taak, is a Slow Seer privileged to work with the Dwellers of the gas-giant Nasqueron in his home system Ulubis. His work consists of rummaging for data in their vast, disorganised memories and libraries. Unfortunately, without knowing it, he's come close to an ancient secret of unimaginable importance....

©2004 Iain M. Banks (P)2005 W.F. Howes Ltd

A masterpiece.

Extremely imaginative yet very real. Excellent characters who feel real. A distant future on a galactic scale. The tech is fascinating but not fantasy. A fast moving story well told. The narrator is perfect. Neither overly dramatic nor attempting to blow your mind, just extremely well done.

Finally! The unabridged version!

I listened to this 12 years ago on cassette tape from my library and I really enjoyed the story and the narration by Geoffrey Annis is perfect. I wanted to listen to it again but I could never find a version to buy on CD or a digital version to download. Thank you Audible for making the unabridged version available for download. I can't wait to listen to this story again! A master SF work by Iain M. Banks.

Whimsical Fun

Ian Banks departs from his Human-centric Culture novels to explore a twist in his post-scarcity society theme. The Agebraist explores how humanity might interact woth a civilization so old, with individuals living as ling as billions of years if they can avoid accidents, that scarcity and all conception of the seriousness of trivial life has been lost. The Quick, the general term for species who live lifespan in the order of decades or centuries, or even millenia, seem to buzz about them in so much tumult and chaotic intensity.

Banks's Dwellers are humerous, their society a lampoons of civilization's foibles and vanity, and the story manages to be exciting while frequently relying heavily on dialog. Very much worth a listen.

With regards to the presentation, it is solid but starts out with an odd "pause for commas" approach that takes some time to adjust to. By the 20% mark either I or the reader had fully adapted to the rhythm and made for an enjoyable British accented presentation.

World building does not a story make.

Excellent world building. Half baked characters with banal and pointless character arcs. As a result the whole affair feels sterile, and leaves one with little emotional investment and instead resigned to a boring trudge through the far reaches of the galaxy, even if that galaxy is well imagined.

Crap

Despite a fantastic narrator, this book is mindless drivel. Word soup. Yuck. Another author from the gutter using f-bombs. I guess they don't teach vocabulary or creative writing these days.

Space Opera//Mcguffin

This is one of Banks' best works, not as grand in scope as the Culture series but maybe even better for it as it doesn't take itself too seriously. The alien races in this book are phenomenal, Dwellers may be my favorite aliens. Geoff Annis' narration is spot-on, you will not be disappointed.

okay after you get into it

Abit difficult to get started with. Characters are somewhat wooden. I had expected a little more from Iain Banks

Excellent characters and world building

Another classic from Banks. Captivating story and interesting characters, especially the enigmatic Dwellers. A bit tough to follow in the beginning due to the amount of characters with weird names. In addition, the narration jumps between characters very abruptly at times, so listeners have to stay on their toes.

Reasonably realistic physics despite there being a galaxy-spanning civilization and FTL travel through wormholes.

Warning: some description of horrific torture. Thankfully it doesn't last that long.

Overall an excellent book.

One of the best Culture Books ...

Banks again plucks at the fibers connecting the deeply personal with the widely galactic. One of my favorite books in the Culture universe.

The performance quickly becomes invisible, which is the desired effect.

Wonderful story.

It kept me riveted until the end. It has a lot of science fiction ideas that I haven't seen before. Great read and quality narration.

Spoiled by awful narration

I jumped at the chance to get hold of the unabridged version of this book which had previously only been available in its severely abridged seven-hour version. To be fair, it is probably not one of IMB's best works, butt is still a hugely entertaining story. Unfortunately, the narrator is very poor indeed. He has clearly acquainted himself with the rather arcane names of places and people typical of IMB, but he seems to have failed utterly to plan ahead in his reading, so the intonational contour of what he reads is frequently wrong, and he often fails to get the tone of the dialogue right as well as making occasional errors with the pronunciation of words (he obviously doesn't know the words hegemony or exigencies for example). He then proceeds to ham it up with overdramatic rendering of action sequences. I shall certainly be looking out for his name as one to avoid in future.

Narrator does not understand sentences

This could be a good book but it is difficult to assess, given the awful narration. The narrator Geoff Aniss makes listening a difficult and painful process and I've never had to rewind so much.
His main problem is the way he continually breaks up sentences with apparent semi-colons at random places; before continuing with the story. It's actually made me; feel angry, because this books comes from an amazing author and has effectively been; mauled.

Hooray and oh dear.

Brilliant book by my favourite writer.

Please get it re-recorded by Peter Kenny. Mr Annis just doesn't get Iain Banks and it comes through in his reading. I lost track so many times and it took me three goes to get through it, so disappointing.

I actually first joined Audible to listen to Iain M. Banks' books but this really doesn't cut it.

PS. three years after I posted the above I decided to be fair. I decided to listen to this again. I decided that this is the single worst reading I have downloaded from Audible. The reader is abominable, he can't read sentences and doesn't even pretend to understand the text. Please, please, please get Mr Kenney to re-record this.

A welcome reboot of Banks' most intriguing work

This was a long time coming. 'The Algebraist' is perhaps one of Banks' lesser-read works, at least if my friends are anything to go by, and the original audio - by Anton Lesser - was of poor quality, from an auditory point of view, although his delicate tones and nice range of character voices are pleasing, ultimately.

If you haven't read it, and like the Iain M Banks canon, you need to. If you haven't read any of his novels before, it's not the place I'd begin, although it is a work of rare treasures, with civilisation-building to rival the best of Banks (and SF in general), some great characters and all the wonder of life on/in a gas giant planet.

My only slight disappointment here was the choice of Geoff Annis for narrator. Don't get me wrong, Annis' buttery Yorkshire tones are very listenable, but his range of character voices is limited, and this can get slightly confusing and a tad dull at times, especially during multi-character conversations.

The other Banks SF works are mainly voiced by the brilliant - for my money, unmatched - Peter Kenny (with the exception of 'Matter', which Toby Longworth brings to spectacular life (and runs Kenny a creditable second in my 'All Time Banks Narrators' (yes, I'm a nerd...)).

It's a shame Kenny wasn't picked for the Algebraist, but I'd happily buy a THIRD cut to hear his take on the insane Archimandrite, the prim Colonel Hatherence and the curious, arcane Dwellers of Nasqueron.

Altogether, a qualified 'buy' for Banks fans; otherwise try 'Matter' or 'Surface Detail' and come back to 'The Algebraist' when you've bathed in the glory that is Iain M Banks (RIP).

Sadly no Peter Kenny

The story is very good in typical Iain M Banks way (not a Culture series novel but in the same vein) but is let down by the narration. Geoff Annis gives an ok narration but doesn’t have the range of Peter Kenny and so is let down by poor female vocals and very bad American-ist accents. I’d still say it’s worth buying.

Brilliant

I have the abridged version of this book and have kistned to it several times. I began this book rather wishing Anton Lesser or Peter Kenny had read it; influenced, no doubt, by reviews that were less than complimentary about Mr. Annis, however I really enjoyed the narration and will seek out other books narrated by him.

Not The Culture But A Great Listen

A little over long but a great listen, have previously listened to the abridged audio book but enjoyed this a lot more. Not quite Banks at his best but still a brilliant!!!

Nothing new.

I had the pleasure of reading the book when it was first published. listening to the story, read by a superb narrator, has added to the drama and given me a new perspective on the tale. But whatever form you choose, the truth is that the story remains a magnificent Iain Banks creation. For those that continue to love his work this is not a surprise.

An ok story but too long-winded in parts

This would have made a good short story but as with some of Bank’s books there are too many diversions and introspections that lend nothing to the story. It was hard not to switch off at times. Contrary to some other reviewers, I found the narrator to be the saving grace!

PLEASE get Peter Kenny to redo this!

This is such a good book, I've read the paperback version and love the story, but this narrator is terrible. Almost every sentence is read incorrectly, it's painful to listen to.

The only other audio option available for this book is an abridged version - which is missing half of the book - a crime considering the limited number of Banks books in the world.