Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
346th out of 2,950 books
—
12,444 voters
Feersum Endjinn
In a world where one can live multiple lives, Count Alandre Sessine VIII has survived seven times and is down to his last, leaving him one final shot at finding his killer. His only clues point to a conspiracy that reaches far beyond his own murder, and survival lies in discovering other fugitives who know the truth about the ultimate weapon of chaos and salvation. Reprint...more
Paperback, 311 pages
Published
July 1st 1996
by Spectra
(first published 1994)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
3,000)
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.
Thayr r meny protaguniss in Feersum Endjin but Bascule iz reely the dryvin chayractr. Hez the regyoolar gi we can idennify wif. Hez the unliklee hero frust in2 sercumstansis beyond hiz understandin...more
Thayr r meny protaguniss in Feersum Endjin but Bascule iz reely the dryvin chayractr. Hez the regyoolar gi we can idennify wif. Hez the unliklee hero frust in2 sercumstansis beyond hiz understandin...more
35 likes · like · see review
view all 18 comments
Criptosfera è un breve romanzo di Iain M. Banks, slegato dal suo più celebre ciclo della "Cultura".
Una tale presentazione non può che indurre in un errore e poi in una mastodontica sorpresa. Per quanto breve e "singolo", Criptosfera è un romanzo innovativo e visionario, ma anche piuttosto pesante ed affollato. Affollato di visioni, personaggi, mastodontiche strutture architettoniche e diversi livelli di realtà virtuale. E' un romanzo piuttosto difficile da leggere: molti sono caduti nell'errore...more
Una tale presentazione non può che indurre in un errore e poi in una mastodontica sorpresa. Per quanto breve e "singolo", Criptosfera è un romanzo innovativo e visionario, ma anche piuttosto pesante ed affollato. Affollato di visioni, personaggi, mastodontiche strutture architettoniche e diversi livelli di realtà virtuale. E' un romanzo piuttosto difficile da leggere: molti sono caduti nell'errore...more
"Count Sessine is about to die for the very last time…." With a tag line like that, how wrong can you go?
Though this is one of my favorite of Banks' books, I would not recommend it for everyone. Indeed, I would suggest reading after you have already come to appreciate/trust him as a writer.
Feersum Endjinn is not a Culture book, but is a wonderfully imagined and brilliantly written book. Even so, it is not an easy book to read. This is not only due to the complex multi-perspective post-post-mode...more
Though this is one of my favorite of Banks' books, I would not recommend it for everyone. Indeed, I would suggest reading after you have already come to appreciate/trust him as a writer.
Feersum Endjinn is not a Culture book, but is a wonderfully imagined and brilliantly written book. Even so, it is not an easy book to read. This is not only due to the complex multi-perspective post-post-mode...more
It was a toss-up whether I included Feersum Engjinn among my Banks's greatests. I probably should have done. Certainly I would have done had I not feared that the strange phonetic spelling of Bascue the dyslexic Teller(prescient of modern day texting or what?)and the difficulty this might create for some readers. Actually, given the univerality of much the same dyslexic texting these days, Bascule might be the easiest text in the book for many readers. But absolutely no doubt that this is an awa...more
Well, this was what I wrote in 1995 when I read this book. I think I was a bit hard on Banks and the philosophy behind the "Culture" series; after all it was himself who said the fate of one character properly managed can be the subject of an entire book. Anyway, to the review, which originally appeared in my apazine "In the Wedge" for "Acnestis" in February 1995.
Ah jus finisht reedin "Feersum Endjinn" ba Iain Em Banx. U kan tel, cant u? Its way weerd. Ah thot it wuz fukin long an ol. 1/2 thi ti...more
Ah jus finisht reedin "Feersum Endjinn" ba Iain Em Banx. U kan tel, cant u? Its way weerd. Ah thot it wuz fukin long an ol. 1/2 thi ti...more
Set on an almost unrecognizable far future Earth, this book is Iain. M. Banks' second non-Culture SF endevour. Earth is past it's golden hour, and technology has fallen into the realm of mysticism and ritual. The story follows four different people living in the remains of what can only be described as an disproportionately scaled super-city as they are reluctantly dragged into a plot involving a threat against the entire Earth. They face a conspiracy of powerful individuals with their own agend...more
Jun 01, 2010
Alan
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Tough guys, linguistically speaking
Recommended to Alan by:
Other work
Man, this book was hard to get through... about a third of it is written from the point of view of young Bascule, who uses an idiosyncratic orthography that is part cellphone text and l33tspeak, and part Charlie Gordon in his pre-savant phase. In its way, this is quite a sustained achievement, but having to sound out the narrative for those parts word by word does rather interrupt the flow.
Ultimately, I found this one not nearly as satisfying as Banks' other works... in addition to Bascule's nea...more
Ultimately, I found this one not nearly as satisfying as Banks' other works... in addition to Bascule's nea...more
This book was my introduction to Iain Banks, who was recommended to me by a friend.
I've no idea if this book is indicative of the rest of his oeuvre, but the best word I can come up with to describe "Feersum Endjinn" is "weird."
The plot in a nutshell: It is thousands of years in the future, and Earth is threatened by a sun-blocking cloud of space dust which may well destroy all human life on the planet. Said humans are very long lived indeed at this point, because there's been a bit of an update...more
I've no idea if this book is indicative of the rest of his oeuvre, but the best word I can come up with to describe "Feersum Endjinn" is "weird."
The plot in a nutshell: It is thousands of years in the future, and Earth is threatened by a sun-blocking cloud of space dust which may well destroy all human life on the planet. Said humans are very long lived indeed at this point, because there's been a bit of an update...more
1 like · like · see review
Mar 05, 2012
Felix Zilich
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
post-apocal,
cyberpunk
В середине “нулевых” прочитал дюжину романов Иэна Бэнкса и, похоже, переборщил с дозой. Писатель порядком замылился и набил оскомину словно сериал Supernatural, все еще любимый, но вызывающий кислую мину при одном упоминании. Прошло несколько лет. У Бэнкса вышло на русском около шести новых романов. Этот факт можно было и дальше успешно игнорировать, но непрочитанный по сей день красный томик “Безатказного арудия” настолько примелькался, настолько изныл немым укором на самой видной полке, что па...more
Wow what a book. Where to start? It's layered, both literally and metaphorically. A lot of it is written in phonetics which starts out really hard to read but you get used to it. There are characters who are birds, ants, and all manner of weirdness. It's often hard to tell where base-reality and other levels of reality begin and end. It's a race to save the world. It's got kings and counts and an ice skating asura.
This book took a long time to read for such a short book. I found myself going ba...more
This book took a long time to read for such a short book. I found myself going ba...more
Feersum Endjinn is the 5th Iain Banks' novel written under his sf nom de plume, Iain M Banks, and is his first sf novel that is not set in the Culture universe. It won the 1995 British Science Fiction award for best novel.
The book is set on an extremely far future earth. It has been centuries since the inhabitants of earth decided to withdraw from galactic civilization and set up an idyllic closed off civilization on earth. Technology exists that allows people to easily upload their minds into t...more
The book is set on an extremely far future earth. It has been centuries since the inhabitants of earth decided to withdraw from galactic civilization and set up an idyllic closed off civilization on earth. Technology exists that allows people to easily upload their minds into t...more
Well. It's earth that's on the verge of an ice age. It's also an earth where people who are left behind (earth having been vacated by those who wanted to be space explorers) have forgotten science, and are mystics. It's an earth where cities have died and the last bastion of civilization is an enormous castle called Serehfa. It's an earth where the people live 8 lives, after which they move into a virtual world called the crypt and have 8 more lives to live there. It's an earth where there's a b...more
1 like · like · see review
The books of Iain Banks can be divided into sf and non sf novels. Famously his publishers asked that they be published under different names and so we have Iain M Banks for the science fiction and Iain Banks for the rest. The books of Iain M Banks can be further split into Culture novels and non Culture novels, depending on whether they use the galaxy spanning, high-tech, egalitarian civilisation of the Culture as a backdrop. 'Feersum Enjinn' is not a Culture novel, but is instead set in a far f...more
Journey: 4 stars, Ending, 2 stars
Like so many Ian M. Banks books, the world building is incredible. The characters moving through the space and exploring it for the reader all have interesting points of view and provide different perspectives on the world they're trying to influence and even the systems of the world have personality.
My only complaint about this book is that (view spoiler)...more
Like so many Ian M. Banks books, the world building is incredible. The characters moving through the space and exploring it for the reader all have interesting points of view and provide different perspectives on the world they're trying to influence and even the systems of the world have personality.
My only complaint about this book is that (view spoiler)...more
Solid concentration and effort is required to make any sense of the bizarre, alien, multi-layered world which Banks has created in Feersum Enjinn and it is certainly one of the more challenging books I have read in recent times.
Set in an unfamiliar reality, with interweaving time lines, the book's staccato delivery affords glimpses of the world and characters in multi-faceted chapters which serve to frustrate attempts at creating a meaningful narrative within this extraordinary environment. It i...more
Set in an unfamiliar reality, with interweaving time lines, the book's staccato delivery affords glimpses of the world and characters in multi-faceted chapters which serve to frustrate attempts at creating a meaningful narrative within this extraordinary environment. It i...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
This being the third Iain Banks book I've read, I feel like I'm getting more of a handle of him as a writer. Oftentimes, I feel that the author has in the past faulted when it came to convoluted description. However, Feersum Endjin lacks a lot of background and description and relies primarily on characters to drive the story. In many ways, this work triumphs where his other books seem to falter: storytelling, simplicity, and character build. It is efficient in comparison to his other narratives...more
This book wasn't the easiest book to get into or to read. Each chapter is divided into 4 parts (except the last chapter it has six parts,) each part is the story of a different character. One of the characters, Bascule, was my favorite but his story was also the hardest for me to read, it's written phonetically (which my brain has trouble translating).
The story takes place on Earth (way in the future) where people live their lives, die, then are transferred into a digital world where they live...more
The story takes place on Earth (way in the future) where people live their lives, die, then are transferred into a digital world where they live...more
I was really disappointed by this. Most of the characters are extremely irritating, with the exception of Bascule who is endearing and funny.
The problem was that the book read like the first draft of a novel that was never finished. I'm quite sure that Mr. Banks knew exactly what was going on but didn't always bother to inform his readers. A lot of the things that happened just didn't have any explanation to them - or at least an explanation that I personally didn't find satisfying. And then, a...more
The problem was that the book read like the first draft of a novel that was never finished. I'm quite sure that Mr. Banks knew exactly what was going on but didn't always bother to inform his readers. A lot of the things that happened just didn't have any explanation to them - or at least an explanation that I personally didn't find satisfying. And then, a...more
Nothing much to say about it. It was quite good, but the only thing that made it special for me was the almost-lolspeak in parts of it. It was interesting and well-written, but not quite as clever as I think the author thought it was. At least I guessed some of the plot twists beforehand and hoped I was wrong but wasn't. Which was a bad thing, since the twists I did guess were a bit... you know, meh. Just... meh. Not really bad but not really good either.
Still, if you like Banks, no reason to s...more
Still, if you like Banks, no reason to s...more
Iain M Banks went off and wrote a few non-Culture sf books just to prove he could, and what we got was a dazzling, baroque novel about a moribund future Earth about to be swamped by an interstellar dust cloud and the efforts of various parties to activate ancient defense systems which, if they actually exist, may save the day, while the ruling elite for reason of their own, work to thwart these efforts. The book is also notable because fully one third of it is spelled fonetikly, with the result...more
It's the time of the Encroachment when a dust cloud will blot out the sun. Count Sessine is about to die for the last time; chief scientist Gadfium receives a message from the Plain of Stones; and Bascule the Teller delves into the Crypt in search of an ant. This book weaves its different narratives together skilfully into a satisfying whole with a great conclusion. Highly recommended as an introduction to Banks, if you want to read something outside the Culture novels.
Some people may be put off...more
Some people may be put off...more
This book doesn't seem to get as much praise as Banks' better-known Culture series, but I thought it was as good as or better than most of the Culture novels. I liked the setting of a civilisation living off what a more technologically advanced civilisation had left behind, largely based in a gigantic castle built on a scale hundred of times larger than human scale. There was an interesting contrast in a society that is in many ways a feudal/medieval society but one that still has some access to...more
I didn't think this was a bad book - the ideas and concepts involved were interesting, and I can admire the craft of the writing. However, I just didn't enjoy it all that much. In the end, the book seemed to be more about that craft and those ideas, and I didn't really care about any of the characters, which is unfortunately rather necessary for me as a reader. So I felt a certain distance from the book.
Because of the way the author wrote the Bascule sections, it also felt like kind of a chore t...more
Because of the way the author wrote the Bascule sections, it also felt like kind of a chore t...more
This is the second time I have read this book. I found it more enjoyable the first time.
I found the first two thirds of the book enjoyable and entertaining and I was interested in the characters and their journey through both the world and the "Krypt". Unfortunately I did not enjoy the technical aspects of the plot and, as this is much more relevant toward the end of the book, i found my interest wained as the book progressed.
I would recommend the book to anyone who has the time to really concen...more
I found the first two thirds of the book enjoyable and entertaining and I was interested in the characters and their journey through both the world and the "Krypt". Unfortunately I did not enjoy the technical aspects of the plot and, as this is much more relevant toward the end of the book, i found my interest wained as the book progressed.
I would recommend the book to anyone who has the time to really concen...more
As with the majority of the "M" version of Iain Banks's novels on completion of the book I wasn't entirely sure I had understood it all, this is not in any way a complaint about his Science Fiction writing more a concern that I'm simply not clever enough to fully appreciate what goes in to his writing in this genre, I think I just haven't taken it all in so vast are his landscapes and full are the lives of his characters (let alone what kind of creatures they may be, on what plain of existence e...more
Originally published on my blog here in January 2004.
After several more straightforward works this novel is something of a return to the experimental style of Banks' earlier writing. Its structure of multiple interconnected narratives is reminiscent of The Bridge (although simpler), particularly as one of the threads is written phonetically.
The setting, like that of his previous science fiction novel (characterising those published under the middle initial as such) Against a Dark Background, is...more
After several more straightforward works this novel is something of a return to the experimental style of Banks' earlier writing. Its structure of multiple interconnected narratives is reminiscent of The Bridge (although simpler), particularly as one of the threads is written phonetically.
The setting, like that of his previous science fiction novel (characterising those published under the middle initial as such) Against a Dark Background, is...more
Definitely a worthwhile read. The setting was unusual--a castle built as if for giants, a landscape more than proper architecture; and then the virtual world of the Crypt, where life continues after death, and which is a strange place indeed. The characters are rather strange as well--for example, a talking ant named Ergates, friend of a boy named Bascule, whose sections of narration are spelled phonetically, which takes a little getting used to, but his 'voice' comes through distinctly. With th...more
The Count Sessine had died many times, once in an aircraft crash, once in a bathyscape accident, once at the hand of an assassin, once in a duel, once at a hand of a jealous lover, once at the hand of a lover's jealous husband and once of old age. Now, it was twice at the hand of an assassin; a male one this time, for a reason he was unable to determine, and - most distressingly - for the last time. Finally, physically dead, for ever more.
On a future earth about to enter a cosmic dust crowd that...more
On a future earth about to enter a cosmic dust crowd that...more
Iain M. Banks, más conocido en el mundo de la ciencia ficción por su serie de La Cultura, nos propone esta vez una novela fuera de este universo. Banks nos suelta sin más en la trama de ’El Artefakto’, lo que puede despistar a lectores poco habituados a leer historias de este género. De igual manera, y como es habitual en los libros de Banks, la estructura tiene mucha importancia. Banks utiliza como vehículo la ciencia ficción para explicarnos lo que tiene pensado: la lucha por el poder, la polí...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Iain Banks / Iain...: Feersum Endjinn | 1 | 7 | Aug 14, 2012 01:08am |
Iain M. Banks is a pseudonym of Iain Banks which he uses to publish his Science Fiction.
Banks's father was an officer in the Admiralty and his mother was once a professional ice skater. Iain Banks was educated at the University of Stirling where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. He moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988 when he returned to Scotland, li...more
More about Iain M. Banks...
Banks's father was an officer in the Admiralty and his mother was once a professional ice skater. Iain Banks was educated at the University of Stirling where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. He moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988 when he returned to Scotland, li...more
Share This Book
2 trivia questions
More quizzes & trivia...
