Song of Stone Uk Edition [Paperback]

Iain Banks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 7, 1997

The war is ending, perhaps ended. But for the castle and its occupants, the troubles are just beginning - armed gangs roam a lawless land and taking to the roads with the other refugees, anonymous in their raggedness, seems safer than remaining in the ancient keep.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This brutal tale starts in a bleak, brutal European any-war. Abel and Morgan live in a forboding castle, alone and isolated, until the conflict intrudes on their numb lives in the form of a cruel mercenary lieutenant and her violent, ravaging men who take up residence. From there, the tale disintegrates into darkness and atrocity, punctuated by Abel's memories of earlier joy and pain. Iain Banks pushes the story steadily downward, dragging the morbidly fascinated reader into the depths of human despair. Gang rape, torture, and incest are seen through Abel's uncaring eyes--this book is not for the squeamish. And although Banks strives for a Passion play in the end, what's missing is even the tiniest kernel of real redemption. Fans of The Wasp Factory and Banks's other non-science fiction works will find familiar details here, but A Song of Stone stands alone as a fable of hopelessness. --Therese Littleton --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

"This could be any place or time," observes the narrator of this near-future fable, summing up the universality of its antiwar sentiments. Although vague in the details of geography and history, Banks's latest U.S. release (after Excession) is sharp and perceptive in its philosophical exploration of the dehumanizing potential of armed conflict. Set in a Brechtian landscape of revolution and depleted resources, it follows the tribulations of Abel, an aristocrat forced to billet Lieutenant Lute and her guerrilla army in his castle. Initially, the two treat each other with a strained civility that allows Abel to gloat secretly at the profane hordes who "commonise... what should be free from vulgar threat." As the battle draws threateningly nearer, the pretense of mutual respect dissolves and Abel finds the increasingly barbaric behavior of his captors resonating with a savagery in his own soul. Like J.G. Ballard and Anthony Burgess, Banks is a visionary whose depictions of the strange forms morality, politics and social relationships assume under the pressure of extreme circumstances fall almost by default into the realm of science fiction and horror. His impeccable prose undulates with a poetry and sensuality that transform the most ordinary movements of his tale into resonant images of beauty and terror. In less skilled hands, Abel's reluctant acknowledgment of his class's complicity in the despoliation of the country might have been just another war-is-hell story. Banks makes it the fulcrum of an emotionally intense odyssey of self-revelation. (Sept.) FYI: Simon & Schuster will simultaneously reissue Banks's first novel, The Wasp Factory (1984), in trade paper.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown Company (August 7, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316641723
• ISBN-13: 978-0316641722
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,461,599 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Least impressive Banks' book I've read so far..., February 9, 1999

By 

P. Robert Paustian "P. Robert Paustian" (Whitehall, Pennsylvania, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Song of Stone: A Novel (Hardcover)

While Ian Banks is one of the most interesting writers I've come across in the last few years, unfortunately "A Song of Stone" is one of the least engaging novels I've ever finished. Muted, yet overwrought, this tale of dissolution is less shocking than turgid. The extended and tedious stretches of "purple prose" in this disappointing book, which were apparently consciously intended to embody the self-absorbed and effete mental state of the protagonist and narrator, did little but lose my flagging interest repeatedly. Coyly lurid, and basically quite unsatisfying, this dim variation on an apocalyptic, Road Warrior-ish theme goes nowhere and then dies...Read anything else by Banks before or instead of "A Song of Stone". Though I do rather enthusiastically recommend Banks as an author, I can't in good conscience give thumbs up to this book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Iain's worst by far, I think..., July 15, 2000

By 

"puffinstuf" - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Song of Stone: A Novel (Hardcover)

Iain went too far with this book. If you read this, it's good at first (especially with the Lt.'s introduction killing Half-Caste) but when you keep going it gets horribly one-toned.

Too many scenes are ruined by its consistently bleak nature. Abel always seems to be the underdog; the loser. When he gets his moment, he ruins it again and the story gets worse and worse. Way too much angst and way too much extremities simply adds up to a bad novel.

It's too bad really, because it makes an excellent first impression. However, it has too many flaws as a novel so overall I wouldn't reccomend it to anyone.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well written but unrelentingly dark, May 3, 2003

By 

Michael Battaglia - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A SONG OF STONE: A Novel (Paperback)

Iain Banks' novels are generally not full of bright happy sunshine and singing children (Consider Phelbas has to be the most depressing SF novel I've ever read) but even in the darkest stories there are islands of humors, snatches of dialogue that make you laugh out loud or absurdist situations that can't fail to bring a chuckle to your face. This novel has none of those things. It's just grimness personified, with the tone set right at the beginning and only going downhill from there. It takes place in some unspecified country at an unspecified time during a war for an unspecified cause. Two young lovers, a lord and lady of a castle, try to escape the country. Not too far out, they are captured by a band of soldiers led by a nameless lieutenant, who makes them go back to the castle. The jacket of the book makes it seem more plot centered than it actually is, from that point the book is nearly episodic in nature, with more examples of war and desolation and human darkness, finally ending really in the only way it can. There is absolutely nothing uplifting in this book, even the narrator (the young lord) is decadent and selfish and self-absorbed, and nobody else makes out much better. But for all the bad stuff going on in here, nothing is truly shocking, especially if you've read his other books . . . there are hints of weird relationships, acts of human brutality that in these days of access to world-wide news should be nothing surprising (the most brutal thing I saw was towards the end and involved a mill, frankly, I thought it was well done, really) . . . fortunately that's not really the point, at least as far as I can tell. What works the best here is Banks' writing, which is more fluid and poetic than of us books so far, rich in description and metaphor, yet it rarely becomes bogged down and wordy. It's a different style than he's used so far and it works brilliantly, giving the novel a dense and almost clastrophobic sense to it. In the end, though I'm not sure what you're left with . . . events escalate and go downhill, bad stuff happens and it all comes to a conclusion that you may or may not agree with. I didn't think it was bad as many others on the board, it was highly readable and once you get used to the dark tone it's really not that big a deal, and the prose is beyond excellent. However it shouldn't be anyone's first Banks book, or you're going to think he's this depressing writer out to shock people. I'm pretty sure there's a deeper message to this book somewhere but at some point it gets lost. So what you're left with is a well written very realistic novel that definitely won't give you a warm and fuzzy feeling when you're done. If you can stomach that (even the violence isn't that graphic) then you shouldn't have any problems. But he's done better, for sure. But you can't hit them all out of the park. Better luck next time.