Against a Dark Background (Mass Market Paperback)

~ Iain Banks (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

On the run from a cult of intergalactic religious fanatics who want her death, the Lady Sharrow emerges from retirement to seek out a powerful artifact that may save her life--the legendary Lady Gun, a weapon that kills by altering the reality around it. The author of Consider Phlebas ( LJ 5/15/88) and The Player of Games ( LJ 2/15/89) has constructed a richly hued, far-future tapestry for his latest space adventure. Sophisticated prose, complex characters, and an unbridled imagination combine in this tale of high drama and intrigue. A good choice for most libraries.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

'Banks ain't kidding. He warned you up front that this is a dark novel' Norman Spinrad 'Few of us have been exposed to a talent so manifest and of such extraordinary breadth' The New York Review of Science Fiction 'There is now no British SF writer to whose work I look forward with greater keenness' The Times --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Spectra (July 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553292250
• ISBN-13: 978-0553292251
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #701,672 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very "deep" book, requiring some thought to fully take in., March 17, 2003

By	Alex J. Avriette "Alex Avriette" (Arlington, Virginia USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Against a Dark Background (Paperback)

The back of the book has a quote from a reviewer saying "He warns you up front, this is a dark novel."

Well, compared to Banks' _The Wasp Factory_, this really isn't such a dark novel. I'll quote another reviewer from USENET who said "I can't trust an author who develops characters and kills them." This, however, is also a trait of Banks', and I cant imagine anyone would read this book expecting everyone to escape unscathed from the ominous, looming evil which permeates, quite frankly, every Banks book I've read.

The book tells a story of a woman, who becomes a metaphor for the star system she lives in. Unlike the Culture novels, the "Golter" system is at least a hundred million light years from the nearest star. They are entirely isolated. They have colonized all the planets and moons in their system, but have no hope of ever reaching anyone else. Sharrow is the same way. Alone, even while surrounded by others.

As the system society begins to attack itself, so, too, does Sharrow lose friends. Entire cities are wiped out.

This is not unexpected. You're reading a Banks novel. However, the finish of the book (as other reviewers have hinted, the last 100 pages are worth the rest of the book being somewhat slow and, well, pointless) is quite profound, and ties the rest of the story together in ways I really hadn't anticipated. It actually took me a couple days to reflect on it, and how I felt about the story he had told.

Surprisingly, after a couple days, I realized that what Banks was getting at was the good that actually came out of all the death and destruction in the book. I'll leave the reader to discover that on their own.

I'd highly recommend this to any Banks fan, but perhaps not to a first time Banks reader. Consider _Excession_ instead.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Banks' spin on the meaning of life., May 14, 2005

By	Maynard Handley (Pasadena, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Vicious stuff; the kind of thing you expect from Banks.
The man is just amazing, an imagination more fecund than anything else I've ever encountered. Like _Use of Weapons_ we have the destructive sibling rivalry, like _Consider Phlebas_ we have a grand tour meeting strange and marvellous things along the way.

But most important, in the background we have the *large* theme. In the end, like the culture novels, this is a book about the point of life. The setting is a planetary system millions of light years from any other star and thus incapable of expanding beyond a very finite space. Given this limitation, civilizations have risen and fallen countless times.
The current system is an extreme version of the 20th century west mixed with medieval times --- wealthy corporations as more powerful than states, excessive bureaucracy and legalism --- but the specific details are not that important. The important issue is the question of should it be changed? And if so, too what? If it should be changed, how much suffering is justified in doing so? And what's the point of change, anyway; the new system will be just one more regime like countless regimes that have gone before.

What makes Banks so interesting (and so unpalatable to many readers) is, of course, that he has no answers to these questions, and that he doesn't have much faith in the stock answers society provides. The bulk of his books, including this one, is essentially, IMHO, arguments by example against the happy pat ways in which society answers these questions when they arise.
What makes this book so upsetting is perhaps that he doesn't even provide up the hedonistic comfort of the culture books, the idea that man is optimized for pleasure and might as well concentrate on that. All we get is a very Buddhist endless cycle of suffering with no escape.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Hidden Treasure- Iain M Banks, SF artist extrodinaire, May 24, 1999

By A Customer

This is a book that gives me goose bumps every time I think about it. Just like Banks' 'Feersum Endjinn', this is what I would call a 'perfect' book- perfect because I could not wish it to be different in the smallest detail. SF is particulalrly difficult to write well, because one has to work just as hard on the setting and background as the story itself. Many SF authors often sacrifice one for the other, but Banks' has mastery over both.The worlds he creates are logically consistant and is also believably mysterious full of the gaps of knowledge that the narrative viewpoint of a single person would suffer from. It's those little touches that only experienced and gifted writers truly master. Banks is one such author.

The dark atmosphere, the wonderful female lead character(one of the best ever in SF)and a truly haunting plot with 4-d chracters force me to turn the pages of this book over every now and again, either in my mind or between my fingers. If you enjoyed this novel, you should look into the works of the Australian Sci Fi author Greg Egan.

The only thing that I regret about this novel is that like many of Banks' works it is far from well known. Why, I cannot imagine.