It is difficult to take the full measure of this mercurial work from Iain Banks (the Culture novels). Mr. Banks is an immensely talented author, capable of the kind of abstract thought required for the creation of fictional, technologically advanced societies flung so far into the future that they have nothing in common with the 21st century. And though he gave this novel the full force of his powers, The Algebraist brought me about as close to suicide as I've ever come. There's something so profoundly bleak about this novel, something so nihilistic, so fatalistic, that it's hard to come away from it with anything but a deep sense of relief, that we live here, now, in this relatively peaceful world and not in the future of the Algebraist's imagining.
And yet, or perhaps because of this bleakness, this is an excellent piece of science fiction, full of colorful characters and detestable villains, and finished off by just that right kind of black-hearted British humor all-but-guaranteed to elicit snickers even while wrists are being measured for the razor. Mr. Banks is a treat, a treat that must be taken in moderate doses, but a treat nonetheless. (3/5 Stars)
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