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Matter | 
| Author: Iain M. Banks
Publisher: Orbit
Category: Book
List Price: £18.99
Buy New: £11.31
You Save: £7.68 (40%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  81 reviews
Sales Rank: 3386
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 544
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.5 x 2
ISBN: 1841494178
EAN: 9781841494173
ASIN: 1841494178
Publication Date: January 31, 2008
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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews: Read 76 more reviews...
 Entertaining but a little formulaic December 16, 2008
I've read most of Iain M. Bank's output over the last few years, and for me this story holds up well compared to all but a few of those that came previously. The authors imagination is clearly running on top form and this book is a treat for readers who enjoy detailed and immersive descriptive writing.
Unlike some other reviewers, I particularly enjoyed the contrasting plot lines of hard sci-fi alongside medieval political intrigue. Maybe it's a sign that I need to branch out into some serious fantasy reading, not a genre I have paid much attention to before.
There is a vast kaleidoscope of characters, human and alien (although I wish I had discovered the glossary at the end of the book while reading it!) While everything starts off light and humourous, as the story progresses a dark intensity takes over. It's probably wise to pace your reading so you get to the last 1/3 of the book at the start of the weekend, if you are like me you will need to read that part in pretty much one go.
So, I can't justify much in the way of criticism as I was unable to put it down and have spent most of the last few days absorbing myself in the fantastic world it has created. However, on reflection, it is a 'typical' Banks culture novel, there is a strong taste of formula here. It's obviously one that creates sucessful books, but maybe it was just a little too predictable.
 Superb for a beginner to the series December 3, 2008
Having never read a book in the Culture series before, I wasn't sure what to expect.
I was soon drawn into a fascinating world filled with devious, subtle and herioc characters. Then suddenly the scope of the book changes and we realise that the world that is being described is just one level, of a multi-leveled shellworld. Each level filled with bizarre and wonderful lifeforms. The shellworld itself is only a small part of an enormous and complicated Universe.
To those who found this book rather slow, I would say that it is a perfect book for a Culture beginner - the slightly slower pace at the beginning makes it truly breathtaking when the reader is taken into outside the familiar eighth level into a galaxy of intruige and spectacle.
If you have never read a Culture book before this is a perfect book. I was blown away by the breadth and complexity of Banks' imagination.
A book of two halves - but not cliché November 14, 2008
For the first time in the Iain M. Banks Culture canon, I found myself more interested in the non-Culture, low-tech society existing within a high-tech, alien-built and controlled world. The Sursamen serf and turf-wars, power grabbing and palace intrigue is splendidly, richly and vividly written.
The various journeys, both metaphorically and literally of the main characters, with their speeches and inner thoughts are beautifully realised and realistically human-type-like.
It is almost with regret I found the Culture intervention approximately halfway through to be the start of a slight decline in the story-telling and imagination of the book. With such high-tech, invincibility (however close to final jeopardy they come in the end) it is almost, I repeat almost, a too rapid deus ex machina conclusion wrung from what seems to have been Banks' final threadbare cloth of boredom.
However, to give an example of the wonderful writing in the first half of Matter, how about this from the 2nd page :
'What sullen application these humans devoted to destruction' - Turminder Xuss.
Despite the criticism this is still wonderful stuff. Good science fiction and future imaginings rarely ever matched in the genre.
Just not quite as wonderful all the way through as previous favourites in the series. A pity for this reader and fan.
 I'd give it 3.5 if I could November 13, 2008
Not his best but a book that gradually improved with a better than average ending for Banks - something I feel he can struggle with.
I don't generally like it when he uses the fiction of old technologies cheek by jowl with The Culture for example but the characters were good and the action increasingly urgent......and I just like the whole concept of the Culture
 Had to skip pages - too long, too slow. cf Lord of the Rings November 10, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
For the record; I love Consider Fleabag (sic) and the other Culture novels (more or less), this one was far too long, for too little content of interest. The same story could have been told in, say, 200 pages. The other 360ish pages could have been used to carry the hanging threads forward (Djan, purpose of shellworlds etc).
While I often re-read books, and have shelves and shelves of books that I won't get rid of...I had to skip pages of waffle to finish it once. The story really got going at around page 490! There were FAR too many speeches and descriptions. For that, and for another common theme; too many silly names, I also failed to read the lord of the rings.
Not one I intend to re-read!
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