Feersum Endjinn

Product Information

When I finished this novel I wasn't sure if I liked it. With a good portion of the book written in the vernacular of our grammar-challenged hero, and a whole lot of heady stuff like cyber regions and vast settings, Iain Banks isn't giving the reader an easy go of it. I even had to seach the Internet for Woak up. Got dresd. Had brekfast. Spoke wif Ergates thi ant who sed itz juss been wurk wurk wurk 4 u lately master Bascule, Y dont u ½ a holiday? & I agreed & that woz how we decided we otter go 2 c Mr Zoliparia in thi I-ball ov thi gargoyle Rosbrith. I [ ] had the idea that what virtual reality would become eventually would start to resemble myth and legend.” Chief Scientist Gadfium is about to receive the mysterious message she has been waiting for from the Plain of Sliding Stones… For this is the time of the encroachment and, although the dimming sun still shines on the vast, towering walls of Serehfa Fastness, the end is close at hand. The King knows it, his closest advisers know it, yet sill they prosecute the war against the clan Engineers with increasing savagery.

FEERSUM ENDJINN | Kirkus Reviews

It's not that I didn't like this one. The writing is often beautiful. The semi-phonetic chapters are brilliant as much as they are initially frustrating (you do get used to it after awhile). The story (such as I was able to make out) is wild, original, and delightfully complex. The novel unfolds in groups of four chapters, with each chapter following a particular character: a mysterious woman known as the asura (a Sanskrit word for a kind of divine being or demon), a Count on his last lifetime (oh yeah, some people get seven lifetimes), a scientist trying to decipher mysterious messages (and also caught up in a conspiracy), and everybody's favorite, Bascule the Teller, who is on a quest to find his friend who is an ant (we read his semi-phonetic journal). The book is actually even a bit weirder than I'm making it sound, but I like weird. Multiple Narrative Modes: There are four POV characters; three are written in third-person, while the fourth is in first-person, using Funetik Aksent. His latest book was a science fiction (SF) novel in the Culture series, called The Hydrogen Sonata, published in 2012. The creature that is before us was of the name Uagen Zlepe, a scholar who came to study […] from the civilisation which was once known as the Culture. The origins and workings of the Fastness have been lost in antiquity, ever since the Diaspora in which the builders left the world for unknown destinations, leaving a much more primitive populace to live within its mega-architectural confines. The Fastness and the Diaspora are strongly reminiscent of Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and the Stars and Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, two of my all-time favorite books, while the Cryptosphere feels much like the Metaverse in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, and Asura’s story slightly reminded me of Princess Nell’s coming-of-age adventures with the Primer in Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age. Finally, the primitive guild-like Clan Engineers and baroque society left behind after the Diaspora reminded me of the monastic societies in Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, with their limited understanding of a much more advanced past, but who strive to carefully preserve that knowledge nonetheless.Addeddate 2022-12-30 20:17:20 Identifier something-real_202212 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2qh6pj9h0m Ocr tesseract 5.2.0-1-gc42a Ocr_autonomous true Ocr_detected_lang zh Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script HanS Virtual Ghost: People who die have their memories saved and are reincarnated in new bodies; however after a certain number of deaths they are reduced to virtual ghosts. After they die enough times in the virtual world, they stop existing altogether.

Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks | Waterstones

Little is known about the ancient human society that built the Crypt inhabited by our POV characters—their history thoroughly corrupted by time into the realm of myth. We’re thrown right into the world to find our way as the characters find theirs. You can tell Banks is having a blast using the cyberpunk toolbox to tell the story he wants in the way he wants to. This is a future earth story, and part of the issue I have with this book was that the main character: Bascule the Teller writes a large part of the story phonetically, and is really quite difficult to get used to. What actually happens is your reading pattern is disrupted, and instead of focusing on the story and the character's dilemma, you end up deciphering the text like hieroglyphs. But don't just think this is just a novel of ideas. The characters and the individual stories were all fascinating and funny and full of great reveals and twists. More than enough for three normal novels, even. :)

Banks' finest and most challenging achievement in Feersum Endjin comes whenever he shifts his narrative to Bascule, the dyslexic Teller who writes his story phonetically because he can't write it any other way. His accent, which feels a little North London and a little Glasgow, makes the phonetic spelling just a touch more challenging for the reader (particularly if the reader is from North America), but if one takes one's time, and even reads it aloud, the pay off is worth the work it takes to read. Riting a revyoo as thoh I wuz Bascule seems 2 me the obveeyus cors. 1 mit even say the playd cors; the yoosd up an cleechayd cors. But a browz uv the revyoos postd on Goodreedz indicayts uderwize. I wood ½ thot bi now sumbudy wood ½ ritten a revyoo in the styl uv Bascule but it apeerz not 2 b the cays.