rleyton reviewed Against A Dark Background by Iain M. Banks
Disappointed
2 stars
Struggled. Plot, characters, style, just felt haphazard and confusing.
Far removed from my experience with his exemplary Culture series.
Hardcover, 487 pages
Published April 17, 1993 by Orbit.
Sharrow was once the leader of a personality-attuned combat team in one of the sporadic little commercial wars in the civilization based around the planet Golter. Now she is hunted by the Huhsz, a religious cult which believes that she is the last obstacle before the faith's apotheosis, and her only hope of escape is to find the last of the apocalyptically powerful Lazy Guns before the Huhsz find her.Her journey through the exotic Golterian system is a destructive and savage odyssey into her past, and that of her family and of the system itself.
Struggled. Plot, characters, style, just felt haphazard and confusing.
Far removed from my experience with his exemplary Culture series.
I can't find fault with this book. It was a kind of sci-fi-ish adventure, but it wasn't all just flashy action. It wasn't overly sweet or happily ever after, just my kind of a little dark. Yet I don't feel as engaged with this book as I would have liked to feel. The book even asked some nice questions, that I'd like to think about. I feel like I as a reader have betrayed it somehow, by not being in the right mood for it.
As ever, a great story line. Imaginative with great twists. Very dark. But i found it rather endless with too many battle scenes