A Song of Stone : A Novel (Paperback)

from kevinashley

A curious Banks novel, written in a voice that's quite different from the one he usually employs for regular fiction. Told in a formal and somewhat archaic first person, it describes on the surface the events around the abandonment and capture of a castle caught up in a war whose nature is never ...

from Philogos

When I realised that God, like Santa and the Tooth Fairy was wishful thinking, the universe was a vast and cold place to be I never pictured anything as unremittingly dismal as Banks' vision in this book. Normally I can't put down his Sci-fi and find the serious novels somewhat heavy going but th...

from jonfaith

My wife read all of the Hitchhikers series by Douglas Adams recently. Afterwards she swallowed Ian McEwan's Cement Garden in practically a single gulp; during her inhalation, she noted, Douglas is a hoot but this - the McEwan - is writing. Likewise my speculative meanders and flanks have been eng...

from jonfaith

My wife read all of the Hitchhikers series by Douglas Adams recently. Afterwards she swallowed Ian McEwan's Cement Garden in practically a single gulp; during her inhalation, she noted, Douglas is a hoot but this - the McEwan - is writing. Likewise my speculative meanders and flanks have been eng...

from JulesJones

I usually love Banks' work, both with and without the M -- but I abandoned this one less than a third of the way through. It tried so terribly hard to be shocking and boundary-pushing, and succeeded only in being so deadly boring and predictable that I couldn't make myself read any further.