-
Inversions
- Culture Series, Book 6
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $18.15
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Children of Time
- By: Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Narrated by: Mel Hudson
- Length: 16 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed stand-alone novel Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Who will inherit this new Earth? The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden.
-
-
A very pleasant surprise
- By Simon on 06-17-17
-
Shards of Earth
- By: Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Narrated by: Sophie Aldred
- Length: 18 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade him in the war. And one of humanity's heroes now scrapes by on a freelance salvage vessel, to avoid the attention of greater powers. After Earth was destroyed, mankind created a fighting elite to save their species, enhanced humans such as Idris. In the silence of space they could communicate, mind-to-mind, with the enemy. Then their alien aggressors, the Architects, simply disappeared - and Idris and his kind became obsolete. Now, 50 years later, Idris and his crew have discovered something strange abandoned in space.
-
-
Not sure what the point was [Spoilers]
- By C. Andrew Hessler on 08-27-21
-
Revelation Space
- By: Alastair Reynolds
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 22 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself. With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. But as he closes in on the secret, a killer closes in on him because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason.
-
-
Defeated
- By Eoin on 07-15-12
-
The Three-Body Problem
- By: Cixin Liu, Ken Liu - translator
- Narrated by: Rosalind Chao
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.
-
-
Why Rosalamd Chao?
- By Erin on 02-29-24
By: Cixin Liu, and others
-
Altered Carbon
- By: Richard K. Morgan
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 17 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 25th century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person's consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or "sleeve") making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.
-
-
Altered Carbon
- By Jake Williams on 09-22-07
-
Wool
- The Silo Saga, Book 1
- By: Hugh Howey
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world outside has grown toxic, the view of it limited, talk of it forbidden. The remnants of humanity live underground in a single silo. But there are always those who hope, who dream. These are the dangerous people, the residents who infect others with their optimism. Their punishment is simple. They are given the very thing they want: They are allowed to go outside.
-
-
THIS is a strong female character
- By Alex on 03-23-23
By: Hugh Howey
-
Children of Time
- By: Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Narrated by: Mel Hudson
- Length: 16 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed stand-alone novel Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Who will inherit this new Earth? The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden.
-
-
A very pleasant surprise
- By Simon on 06-17-17
-
Shards of Earth
- By: Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Narrated by: Sophie Aldred
- Length: 18 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade him in the war. And one of humanity's heroes now scrapes by on a freelance salvage vessel, to avoid the attention of greater powers. After Earth was destroyed, mankind created a fighting elite to save their species, enhanced humans such as Idris. In the silence of space they could communicate, mind-to-mind, with the enemy. Then their alien aggressors, the Architects, simply disappeared - and Idris and his kind became obsolete. Now, 50 years later, Idris and his crew have discovered something strange abandoned in space.
-
-
Not sure what the point was [Spoilers]
- By C. Andrew Hessler on 08-27-21
-
Revelation Space
- By: Alastair Reynolds
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 22 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself. With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. But as he closes in on the secret, a killer closes in on him because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason.
-
-
Defeated
- By Eoin on 07-15-12
-
The Three-Body Problem
- By: Cixin Liu, Ken Liu - translator
- Narrated by: Rosalind Chao
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.
-
-
Why Rosalamd Chao?
- By Erin on 02-29-24
By: Cixin Liu, and others
-
Altered Carbon
- By: Richard K. Morgan
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 17 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 25th century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person's consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or "sleeve") making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.
-
-
Altered Carbon
- By Jake Williams on 09-22-07
-
Wool
- The Silo Saga, Book 1
- By: Hugh Howey
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world outside has grown toxic, the view of it limited, talk of it forbidden. The remnants of humanity live underground in a single silo. But there are always those who hope, who dream. These are the dangerous people, the residents who infect others with their optimism. Their punishment is simple. They are given the very thing they want: They are allowed to go outside.
-
-
THIS is a strong female character
- By Alex on 03-23-23
By: Hugh Howey
-
Drive
- An Expanse Short Story
- By: James S. A. Corey
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A short story set in the universe of James S. A. Corey's NYT best-selling Expanse series. Now a Prime Original series. This story will be available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion.
-
-
Fun little short story
- By Carson on 12-28-21
-
Quicksilver
- Book One of The Baroque Cycle
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: Neal Stephenson (introduction), Kevin Pariseau, Simon Prebble
- Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In which Daniel Waterhouse, fearless thinker and courageous Puritan, pursues knowledge in the company of the greatest minds of Baroque-era Europe -- in a chaotic world where reason wars with the bloody ambitions of the mighty, and where catastrophe, natural or otherwise, can alter the political landscape overnight.
-
-
Be aware of what you're getting into
- By David on 12-16-11
By: Neal Stephenson
-
Starfish
- Rifters Trilogy Series, Book 1
- By: Peter Watts
- Narrated by: Gabriel Vaughan
- Length: 11 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A huge international corporation has developed a facility along the Juan de Fuca Ridge at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to exploit geothermal power. They send a bio-engineered crew - people who have been altered to withstand the pressure and breathe the seawater - down to live and work in this weird, fertile undersea darkness.
-
-
An excellent story, but only half of it
- By Casey on 02-12-20
By: Peter Watts
-
House of Suns
- By: Alastair Reynolds
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 18 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Six million years ago, at the very dawn of the starfaring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones: the shatterlings. Sent out into the galaxy, these shatterlings have stood aloof as they document the rise and fall of countless human empires. They meet every 200,000 years to exchange news and memories of their travels with their siblings.
-
-
Science fiction in Deep time
- By A reader on 05-12-10
-
The Shadow of the Torturer
- The Book of the New Sun, Book 1
- By: Gene Wolfe
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Shadow of the Torturer is the first volume in the four-volume epic, the tale of a young Severian, an apprentice to the Guild of Torturers on the world called Urth, exiled for committing the ultimate sin of his profession - showing mercy towards his victim.
Gene Wolfe's "The Book of the New Sun" is one of speculative fiction's most-honored series. In a 1998 poll, Locus Magazine rated the series behind only "The Lord of the Rings" and The Hobbit as the greatest fantasy work of all time.
-
-
great writing, won't appeal to everyone
- By Ryan on 03-20-10
By: Gene Wolfe
-
Sixth Column
- By: Robert A. Heinlein
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 5 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The totalitarian East has triumphed in a massive invasion, and the United States has fallen to a dictatorial superpower bent on total domination. That power is consolidating its grip through concentration camps, police state tactics, and a total monopoly upon the very thoughts of the conquered populace. A tiny enclave of scientists and soldiers survives, unbeknownst to America’s new rulers. It’s six against six million - but those six happen to include a scientific genius, a master of subterfuge and disguise who learned his trade as a lawyer-turned-hobo, and a tough-minded commander....
-
-
The Yellow Peril as it was
- By Thomas Martin on 04-16-12
Publisher's summary
The novels of Iain M. Banks have forever changed the face of modern science fiction. His Culture books combine breathtaking imagination with exceptional storytelling, and have secured his reputation as one of the most extraordinary and influential writers in the genre.
In the winter palace, the King's new physician has more enemies than she realises. But then she also has more defences than even her most hardened adversaries could imagine.
In another palace, far across the mountains, sits the regicidal Protector General. His chief bodyguard also has enemies to worry about, with the threat of treachery and assassination never far away.
And beneath the surface of these feudal courts - behind the spies, murders, politics and intrigues - lies an entirely different kind of threat, an entity that nobody would ever suspect.
The Culture series:
Consider Phlebas
The Player of Games
Use of Weapons
Excession
Inversions
Look to Windward
Matter
Surface Detail
The Hydrogen Sonata
The State of the Art
Other books by Iain M. Banks:
Against a Dark Background
Feersum Endjinn
The Algebraist
Critic reviews
"A fantastic, awe-inspiring book...I can't imagine anyone not being won over by this deeply entertaining, thought-provoking and humane story" (Express)
"Taut, hilarious and wicked" (Mail on Sunday)
"Compulsive Banksian reading...thoughtful, intelligently bloody stuff" (SFX)
More from the same
Related to this topic
-
George Orwell’s 1984
- An Audible Original adaptation
- By: George Orwell, Joe White - adaptation
- Narrated by: Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 27 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.
-
-
A Revelation!
- By wotsallthisthen on 04-07-24
By: George Orwell, and others
-
Project Hail Mary
- By: Andy Weir
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 16 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
-
-
Bazinga
- By Davidgonzalezsr on 05-04-21
By: Andy Weir
-
Halfway
- By: Michael Honnah, Imeldha Eloni
- Narrated by: Patricia Allison, Lenny Henry, Arinzé Kene, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 26 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Leading the field of artificial intelligence, Halfway, a subsidiary of Soul-Tech, provides customers with the opportunity to digitally upload their minds so that in the eventuality of their death, loved ones will be able to communicate with an AI simulation and gain closure. But at what cost?A year after her brother Mark’s death, Florence is still consumed by grief. And though her parents encourage her not to dwell on the past, Florence decides to visit Halfway and speak to the simulation of Mark that was created not long before his passing.
-
-
Unusual, Creative plot
- By Carol Prims on 05-22-24
By: Michael Honnah, and others
-
The Martian
- By: Andy Weir
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive - and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet.
-
-
I love Wil Wheaton but why not R. C. Bray?
- By L. Newman on 01-11-20
By: Andy Weir
-
Starter Villain
- By: John Scalzi
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.
-
-
Volcanic Lairs, Death Rays & Cats… Oh My! 😼
- By C. White on 09-19-23
By: John Scalzi
-
Point Nemo
- By: Jeremy Robinson
- Narrated by: R.C. Bray
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the heart of the South Pacific lies Point Nemo, the most desolate and remote place on Earth. At its core is a dead zone, devoid of life, where government agencies crash their obsolete satellites and space stations, confident they won't harm a soul. When the International Space Station suffers a catastrophic failure and plummets through the atmosphere, it's here that Mission Specialist Julie Rohr, an astrobiologist studying living space dust called xylem, finds herself marooned. Julie's only hope for rescue lies in the hands of her estranged father, Dr. Finn Maddern, a renowned mycologist.
-
-
Totally original-totally feasible!
- By Lawrence Tate on 04-10-24
By: Jeremy Robinson
-
George Orwell’s 1984
- An Audible Original adaptation
- By: George Orwell, Joe White - adaptation
- Narrated by: Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 27 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.
-
-
A Revelation!
- By wotsallthisthen on 04-07-24
By: George Orwell, and others
-
Project Hail Mary
- By: Andy Weir
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 16 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
-
-
Bazinga
- By Davidgonzalezsr on 05-04-21
By: Andy Weir
-
Halfway
- By: Michael Honnah, Imeldha Eloni
- Narrated by: Patricia Allison, Lenny Henry, Arinzé Kene, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 26 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Leading the field of artificial intelligence, Halfway, a subsidiary of Soul-Tech, provides customers with the opportunity to digitally upload their minds so that in the eventuality of their death, loved ones will be able to communicate with an AI simulation and gain closure. But at what cost?A year after her brother Mark’s death, Florence is still consumed by grief. And though her parents encourage her not to dwell on the past, Florence decides to visit Halfway and speak to the simulation of Mark that was created not long before his passing.
-
-
Unusual, Creative plot
- By Carol Prims on 05-22-24
By: Michael Honnah, and others
-
The Martian
- By: Andy Weir
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive - and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet.
-
-
I love Wil Wheaton but why not R. C. Bray?
- By L. Newman on 01-11-20
By: Andy Weir
-
Starter Villain
- By: John Scalzi
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.
-
-
Volcanic Lairs, Death Rays & Cats… Oh My! 😼
- By C. White on 09-19-23
By: John Scalzi
-
Point Nemo
- By: Jeremy Robinson
- Narrated by: R.C. Bray
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the heart of the South Pacific lies Point Nemo, the most desolate and remote place on Earth. At its core is a dead zone, devoid of life, where government agencies crash their obsolete satellites and space stations, confident they won't harm a soul. When the International Space Station suffers a catastrophic failure and plummets through the atmosphere, it's here that Mission Specialist Julie Rohr, an astrobiologist studying living space dust called xylem, finds herself marooned. Julie's only hope for rescue lies in the hands of her estranged father, Dr. Finn Maddern, a renowned mycologist.
-
-
Totally original-totally feasible!
- By Lawrence Tate on 04-10-24
By: Jeremy Robinson
What listeners say about Inversions
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Emainiak
- 01-23-22
excellent performance of an interesting devation
Those looking to fill The Culture itch may not get what they are looking for with Inversions, but what they will find instead is an excellent performance of numerous characters by Peter Kenny in an early Enlightenment setting. The subtle court noble dramas of two countries modernizing, or not, in differing ways accompany subtle implications of meddling by a certain higher power. Well worth the listen.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kaustav Chakravarthy
- 03-02-19
Not your usual culture novel
A wonderful work of fiction, but minus the usual trappings of Culture books except for a few brief passages at the end. Still, masterfully written and enjoyable.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Andrew Sloniger
- 11-12-21
Peter Kenny is amazing!
I come for Iain M. Banks but stay for Peter Kenny. Peter breathes life into dozens of characters with a seeming effortlessness. He is a master of his craft.
Excellent book! The indirect allusions to the Culture were easy to pick up on but not overbearing. I enjoyed the parallel narrative approach.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jefferson
- 12-27-15
"A Culture Novel that Wasn't" (But Really Was)
Inversions (1998) is the least obviously science fictional of Iain M. Banks' Culture novels, which are usually replete with imaginative and sublime far future science and technology. The Culture is an interstellar anarchic utopian confederation of artificial and natural worlds populated by humanity, aliens, and sentient machines, and run by AI space ship "Minds." As resources have become practically limitless, everyone is theoretically free to do whatever he or she or it wants. The Culture tries to be an enlightened civilization, being intolerant only of aggressive civilizations. A frequent Culture dilemma is what to do when faced with bellicose civilizations that just won't listen to reason or play fair: improve them, crush them, or ignore them. It is in this context, then, that Banks, in his words, tried "to write a Culture novel that wasn't."
Banks upsets his normal Culture pattern by setting his novel on a single world (with two suns and multiple moons) in a medieval-monarchic-patriarchal civilization that knows nothing of interstellar travel, let alone the Culture. The novel is comprised of two alternating and inverting stories, one about the Doctor, a mysterious woman named Vossil who has become the personal physician to King Quience of Haspidus, the other about the Bodyguard, a mysterious man named DeWar who has become the personal bodyguard of Protector UrLeyn of Tassasen. Even readers unfamiliar with Banks' other Culture novels should gather early on that Vossil and DeWar hail from some much more advanced civilizations. And if you've read some Culture novels you might wonder about a suspicious rain of fiery rocks that caused an empire on this world to fall. . .
The two story strands and their two protagonists mirror each other while remaining tantalizingly separate. Both Vossil and DeWar are trying to keep their respective rulers alive, she through medicine, he through violence. Both retain their integrity, morality, and humanity while surrounded by torturers, assassins, aristocrats, and spies. Yet one gets the impression that Vossil is subtly nudging her King towards progress while DeWar is passively watching his Protector try to establish a new form of government. The two stories are told by different narrators. Vossil's naive young assistant Oleph is spying on her for an unknown master and telling the story of his youthful infatuation with the Doctor when he's an old man, while a sophisticated person who wants to keep his or her identity secret is telling the story of DeWar's attempts to protect the Protector and to explain himself.
Banks being a fine writer, he writes some neat lines, as when Oleph tries to avoid seeing some horrible implements of torture, but "they attracted my wide-open eyes like suns attract flowers." And he writes characters it's easy to care about. DeWar and Vossil are compelling, as are some of the characters around them, Lady Perrund (the maimed and beautiful former first concubine of the Protector), the Protector's little son Lattens, Oleph, and the subtle King Quience.
The philosophical base of the novel rests on shifting sands. Oleph recalls the Doctor telling him that although "We can never be sure of anything. . . yet we must live. We must apply ourselves to the world." But how to apply ourselves? Oleph points out that "We never like to think that we are sinning, merely that we are making hard decisions, and acting upon them." DeWar tells Lattens a story in which some people live in a utopian world where they can fly on invisible wings and everyone has everything they need and is reasonably happy, and wherein two cousins, a man and a woman, friends since childhood, have an argument regarding the savage tribes around them:
"Was it better to leave them alone or was it better to try and make life better for them? Even if you decided it was the right thing to do to make life better for them, which way did you do this? Did you say, Come and join us and be like us? Did you say, Give up all your own ways of doing things, the gods that you worship, the beliefs you hold most dear, the traditions that make you who you are? Or do you say, We have decided you should stay roughly as you are and we will treat you like children and give you toys that might make your life better?"
Thus after all Inversions really is a Culture novel, for Banks can't help writing sf that reveals the culture of our developed countries here and now.
Inversions is also an anti-war story in which, unusually for anti-war stories (and for Culture novels, which usually feature a fair amount of large and small-scale violence), the war here (quite horrible in its effects on individuals and nations) happens far off-stage or in the past. The only war shown in real time is a cool and creepy game (recalling Uncle Toby's hobby in Tristram Shandy) played by DeWar and Lattens in which they fire mini-catapults from a balcony into the landscaped garden below, trying to destroy each other's miniature towns and ports. Are we watching a future warlord being made by playing this "innocent" version of the real war taking place elsewhere in the world.
Peter Kenney reads the audiobook engagingly, giving Vossil an indefinable accent to highlight her foreignness, reading female voices without straining to be feminine, and enhancing the story and characters.
Like each of Banks' Culture novels, Inversions is a self-contained and relatively compact story. It reminds me of the Strugatskis' Hard to Be a God, or of Le Guin's Ekumen stories. It might disappoint fans of heroic or epic fantasy, as well as fans of big spectacle space opera, but people who like Banks' Culture novels and thoughtful and moving sf or fantasy novels about the difficulties in helping people or doing the right thing (or deciding what the right thing is to do) would probably like it.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 12-28-17
Sidetracked Culture
Fine writing as usual, well read - a sorely needed distraction in the culture series
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Fredrik
- 07-25-21
Amazing experiment
Banks is experimenting heavily with this one. While it is a great book I don’t belive it will make any sense without the knowledge from previous Culture books. I would also suggest not jumping on this in excitement after finishing Excession. I did and it through me off for a good while, since they are more or less polar opposites.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Adrian Evans
- 01-12-19
Interesting but not a typical Culture novel
An interesting story, but with almost no mention or reference to the Culture, which was disappointing. Certainly not the tech-infused romps Iain M Banks usually thrills and inspires us tech lovers with. Frankly, not worth reading unless you like medieval pageantry and political prose of pre-tech civilisations - invest your time in another more future focussed episode.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!