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The Spin Trilogy #2
Iron Gods
From Andrew Bannister, author of Creation Machine, comes another thrilling, heart-in-mouth new science fiction novel of the Spin.
In the depths of space, a beacon has awakened. And an ancient technology has begun to stir. As its memory returns, with it comes a terrifying knowledge—a grave warning about the future of the Spin that has been concealed for ten thousand years.
Ten thousand years after the events of Creation Machine, the Spin is in decline and the beleaguered slave economy of the Inside is surrounded by rebel civilizations. A group of escapees from the vast forced-labor unit known as the Hive have stolen the last of the Inside's ancient warships and woken it from an enforced trance that had lasted for millennia. And someone has destroyed a planet that didn't exist, and halfway across the Spin, something has gone wrong with the sky.
In the depths of space, a beacon has awakened. And an ancient technology has begun to stir. As its memory returns, with it comes a terrifying knowledge—a grave warning about the future of the Spin that has been concealed for ten thousand years.
Ten thousand years after the events of Creation Machine, the Spin is in decline and the beleaguered slave economy of the Inside is surrounded by rebel civilizations. A group of escapees from the vast forced-labor unit known as the Hive have stolen the last of the Inside's ancient warships and woken it from an enforced trance that had lasted for millennia. And someone has destroyed a planet that didn't exist, and halfway across the Spin, something has gone wrong with the sky.
320 pages, Paperback
Published July 30, 2019
18 people are currently reading
166 people want to read
About the author
Andrew Bannister
5 books38 followersBorn in 1965, Andrew Bannister grew up in Cornwall. He studied Geology at Imperial College and went to work in the North Sea before becoming an Environmental Consultant. For the day job, he specialises in green transport and corporate sustainability, but he has always written - initially for student newspapers and fanzines before moving on, encouraged by creative writing courses, to fiction. He's always been a reader and has loved science fiction since childhood. From the classics of the 50s and 60s to the present day, he's wanted it all: space, stars, astonishment and adventure - and now he's discovered that writing it is even better. Andrew lives in Leicestershire.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
May 31, 2017
So, here’s the sequel to another of last year’s surprises – the first novel, Creation Machine, was one of my ‘surprisingly good’ reads – one I enjoyed much, much more than I was expecting. It made my best of 2016 list at the end of the year.
Like Creation Machine, Iron Gods takes place in The Spin, an artificially created group of eighty-eight planets and two suns. This is a wonderful place to play, being varied in cultures and species.
However things are changing. Now ten thousand years after Creation Machine, things hinted at there are starting to happen. In the finest traditions of Asimov’s Galactic Empires, The Spin is in decline. The prosperous inner Core (aka ‘The Inside’) has been reduced to a mere eleven planets, with their main means of income coming from a prosperous slave trade from their slave-colony known as The Hive whilst The Outside is much less organised – a Wild West style frontier of cult groups and fringe radicals, mercenaries and outcasts.
We begin Iron Gods with the daring escape of five of the Hivers, led by Seldyan. Not only do they manage to escape what is normally a life sentence (if rather short), they then manage to capture a spaceship.
This leads to Harbour Master Hevalansa Vess being stripped of his executive position and sent under cover into The Hive to determine how Seldyan escaped.
Flamejob is now a cruise ship renamed Sunskimmer but five thousand years ago it was a battleship and it seems that Seldyan and her compatriots plan to resurrect the battleship’s lobotomised AI and bring it back to its previous use as a Main Battle Unit.
With Sunskimmer now (rather Iain M Banks-like) renamed Suck on This, the group set off for the colony of Web City, they find there a society which may not be what it appears to be. Underneath the chaotic lifestyles we see things are not necessarily what they seem to be. They also encounter The Green Star people, which results in a journey to a place that seems not to officially exist….
Here’s the good news – I enjoyed Iron Gods as much as, if not more than, Creation Machine. Pleasingly, it shows us different aspects of The Spin than Creation Machine, and so, rather like the planets of Jack Vance’s work, we get an idea that in Andrew’s writing there are many worlds out there to explore, but we are glimpsing small parts of a much bigger whole. There are parts of this plot that obliquely connect to Creation Machine, but it is not essential to the book. Though the focus of each novel is usually quite small, with the books being thousands of years apart we get the sense of epic-ness, that although we are reading about what seem like small events there is something happening that is unfolding over an enormous time-frame.
Most impressively, Iron Gods is where the Spin series ‘gets political’. This seems to involve a widening of scope as well. Whilst Creation Machine was in part a tale of courtly intrigue, Iron Gods is a tale of bigger politics, more of the role of interworld governments and political parties. It deals with greater issues – of refugees, forced migration and slavery, themes that will resonate with real world situations of the present.
However, whereas some things are different, some things remain slightly familiar. Plus ca change. Seldyan, like Fleare Haas before her, is a character with resolve and determination, whose life has been very different before we get to meet her in this novel. Her boyfriend, Merish, is similar to Fleare’s Muz in that they rely on each other to get things done. Through Iron Gods their relationship is explored and examined to give us a bigger, better picture of these characters, so that, again, the reader gets to care about them, even when tough decisions are made.
One of the things I liked most about Creation Machine was the resourcefulness of the science-fictional concepts and the bizarre alien lifeforms that Andrew drops into the story throughout – I liked the sentient atom cloud of the first novel and the horrific alien eels, for example. This inventiveness continues in Iron Gods – this time around I liked the bizarre idea of ‘The Hollowed’ – humanoid criminals and Hivers re-engineered into a form specifically designed for athletic racing, which others would gamble on. To be Hollowed means to have everything not needed for racing removed – so all organs from the lungs down are removed, with life support being administered by machines before and after a race. It is a brutally efficient means of portraying Mankind’s inhumanity to fellow humans. Andrew’s combination of strange planets, strange aliens and big SF ideas are still in evidence.
The ending of Iron Gods leaves things open to be resolved later. Whilst there is a conclusion there are still many elements to be resolved that will no doubt be addressed in the last book in the trilogy, Stone Clocks (due next year), Nevertheless, some of the events towards the end are not what the reader expects. For me this made Iron Gods a worthy successor to the potential realised in Creation Machine. There’s some really big ideas here. I suspect I am only just comprehending the true ambition of these books.
I really like this series.
Like Creation Machine, Iron Gods takes place in The Spin, an artificially created group of eighty-eight planets and two suns. This is a wonderful place to play, being varied in cultures and species.
However things are changing. Now ten thousand years after Creation Machine, things hinted at there are starting to happen. In the finest traditions of Asimov’s Galactic Empires, The Spin is in decline. The prosperous inner Core (aka ‘The Inside’) has been reduced to a mere eleven planets, with their main means of income coming from a prosperous slave trade from their slave-colony known as The Hive whilst The Outside is much less organised – a Wild West style frontier of cult groups and fringe radicals, mercenaries and outcasts.
We begin Iron Gods with the daring escape of five of the Hivers, led by Seldyan. Not only do they manage to escape what is normally a life sentence (if rather short), they then manage to capture a spaceship.
This leads to Harbour Master Hevalansa Vess being stripped of his executive position and sent under cover into The Hive to determine how Seldyan escaped.
Flamejob is now a cruise ship renamed Sunskimmer but five thousand years ago it was a battleship and it seems that Seldyan and her compatriots plan to resurrect the battleship’s lobotomised AI and bring it back to its previous use as a Main Battle Unit.
With Sunskimmer now (rather Iain M Banks-like) renamed Suck on This, the group set off for the colony of Web City, they find there a society which may not be what it appears to be. Underneath the chaotic lifestyles we see things are not necessarily what they seem to be. They also encounter The Green Star people, which results in a journey to a place that seems not to officially exist….
Here’s the good news – I enjoyed Iron Gods as much as, if not more than, Creation Machine. Pleasingly, it shows us different aspects of The Spin than Creation Machine, and so, rather like the planets of Jack Vance’s work, we get an idea that in Andrew’s writing there are many worlds out there to explore, but we are glimpsing small parts of a much bigger whole. There are parts of this plot that obliquely connect to Creation Machine, but it is not essential to the book. Though the focus of each novel is usually quite small, with the books being thousands of years apart we get the sense of epic-ness, that although we are reading about what seem like small events there is something happening that is unfolding over an enormous time-frame.
Most impressively, Iron Gods is where the Spin series ‘gets political’. This seems to involve a widening of scope as well. Whilst Creation Machine was in part a tale of courtly intrigue, Iron Gods is a tale of bigger politics, more of the role of interworld governments and political parties. It deals with greater issues – of refugees, forced migration and slavery, themes that will resonate with real world situations of the present.
However, whereas some things are different, some things remain slightly familiar. Plus ca change. Seldyan, like Fleare Haas before her, is a character with resolve and determination, whose life has been very different before we get to meet her in this novel. Her boyfriend, Merish, is similar to Fleare’s Muz in that they rely on each other to get things done. Through Iron Gods their relationship is explored and examined to give us a bigger, better picture of these characters, so that, again, the reader gets to care about them, even when tough decisions are made.
One of the things I liked most about Creation Machine was the resourcefulness of the science-fictional concepts and the bizarre alien lifeforms that Andrew drops into the story throughout – I liked the sentient atom cloud of the first novel and the horrific alien eels, for example. This inventiveness continues in Iron Gods – this time around I liked the bizarre idea of ‘The Hollowed’ – humanoid criminals and Hivers re-engineered into a form specifically designed for athletic racing, which others would gamble on. To be Hollowed means to have everything not needed for racing removed – so all organs from the lungs down are removed, with life support being administered by machines before and after a race. It is a brutally efficient means of portraying Mankind’s inhumanity to fellow humans. Andrew’s combination of strange planets, strange aliens and big SF ideas are still in evidence.
The ending of Iron Gods leaves things open to be resolved later. Whilst there is a conclusion there are still many elements to be resolved that will no doubt be addressed in the last book in the trilogy, Stone Clocks (due next year), Nevertheless, some of the events towards the end are not what the reader expects. For me this made Iron Gods a worthy successor to the potential realised in Creation Machine. There’s some really big ideas here. I suspect I am only just comprehending the true ambition of these books.
I really like this series.
January 3, 2018
A fascinating universe.
December 13, 2018
I loved this book.
Why? Lots of reasons, including:
Excellent world building. Complex narrative driven by interesting and believable characters. Weird and wonderful alien species (weird BUT still believable). Cool VR and AI.
There were beautiful settings and icky ones. Friendship and banter juxtaposed with torture and downright skulduggery, political intrigue, religious fanatics and insurrection... And a millennia-spanning plot. Ohh... and don't forget the giant spider and other interesting insectoids so vital to events!
Highly recommended. Give me more!*
(*Suppose I'd better go back and read part 1 now...)
Why? Lots of reasons, including:
Excellent world building. Complex narrative driven by interesting and believable characters. Weird and wonderful alien species (weird BUT still believable). Cool VR and AI.
There were beautiful settings and icky ones. Friendship and banter juxtaposed with torture and downright skulduggery, political intrigue, religious fanatics and insurrection... And a millennia-spanning plot. Ohh... and don't forget the giant spider and other interesting insectoids so vital to events!
Highly recommended. Give me more!*
(*Suppose I'd better go back and read part 1 now...)
July 18, 2017
Not sure whether this book is about something. It is entertaining to read and is somewhat resembling of Banks - its large artificial structure setting, its ships with funny names, and at times the style. It is nice read but one should not ask too many questions about it in order to enjoy it.
November 26, 2019
extremely disappointing after a very strong start; only the still interesting Spin universe kept me from giving it one star as the prose and characters just are bad in this one
March 5, 2021
In the Spin, an artificial construction of nearly a hundred worlds around a few close stars, things have been thrown into upheaval as a new stars has appeared in the sky. But that's not important, yet, to a team of technical workers who make a desperate bid to escape their world of virtual slavery and steal a starship. Yet their action has ramifications that will lead them straight into the mystery of the new star and effect the Spin as a whole.
This book has only the slightest connection to the previous book in the series, in that the events that happened in it are history... literally, hundreds of years in the past, and so not only do no characters really recur (there's a few I'm not entirely sure about but obviously if I can't be sure they're not really significant enough to count), a lot of the political setup and important players in the world has changed as well. So it might as well be a standalone.
And as that... it's not bad. The characters and their story didn't really grab me as much as the ones in the first book did... but it didn't completely drop the ball with them like that one did either. The overall plotting is better... it's still a bit weird pacing with sudden shifts to plotlines where I'm not really sure why they're doing it. And a few eyerolling coincidences (like a world that's been isolated basically forever sharing a language with the main characters). But at least it doesn't take the plotlines and characters I was enjoying and have them all essentially decide "Screw it, I'm tired I'll deal with this stuff another time." and then have another batch of characters we'd never seen finish the major plot and render them all pointless. And, like the other one, this jumps back and forth between two storylines but there wasn't one that I half-dreaded going back to because it was just people I didn't care about do evil things.
Yet... it didn't thrill me as much either. I still broadly liked exploring the universe and the technical level. The story was okay. With the particular type of subgenre this is that's enough to get me to continue to the third book (that is, because I've already purchased it in a bundle with the rest of the trilogy... otherwise I might just have skipped it, but the potential I saw in the first book might have eventually gotten me to check it out anyway).
I'll give it three stars but again it's probably in the 2.5-3 range.
This book has only the slightest connection to the previous book in the series, in that the events that happened in it are history... literally, hundreds of years in the past, and so not only do no characters really recur (there's a few I'm not entirely sure about but obviously if I can't be sure they're not really significant enough to count), a lot of the political setup and important players in the world has changed as well. So it might as well be a standalone.
And as that... it's not bad. The characters and their story didn't really grab me as much as the ones in the first book did... but it didn't completely drop the ball with them like that one did either. The overall plotting is better... it's still a bit weird pacing with sudden shifts to plotlines where I'm not really sure why they're doing it. And a few eyerolling coincidences (like a world that's been isolated basically forever sharing a language with the main characters). But at least it doesn't take the plotlines and characters I was enjoying and have them all essentially decide "Screw it, I'm tired I'll deal with this stuff another time." and then have another batch of characters we'd never seen finish the major plot and render them all pointless. And, like the other one, this jumps back and forth between two storylines but there wasn't one that I half-dreaded going back to because it was just people I didn't care about do evil things.
Yet... it didn't thrill me as much either. I still broadly liked exploring the universe and the technical level. The story was okay. With the particular type of subgenre this is that's enough to get me to continue to the third book (that is, because I've already purchased it in a bundle with the rest of the trilogy... otherwise I might just have skipped it, but the potential I saw in the first book might have eventually gotten me to check it out anyway).
I'll give it three stars but again it's probably in the 2.5-3 range.
August 30, 2020
The Spin: a vast artificial star system providing the stage for political and other power games. The Hive – a portmanteau of High Value, but equally a true hive – houses a population of slaves forming the economic base of an entire society.
These and other examples of what we would call bizarre practises are the decor of the Culturesque story Bannister is delivering: the theft of an enormous space cruiser changes the political reality in The Spin. The cruiser is a ten thousand year old decommissioned war ship with its own ideas and agenda.
Bannister is describing events from first persons’ views: the thieves; the slaves; political leaders; and people in a declining society, who have made a religion based upon the old war ships, taking them for gods.
The scifi in this story is essential: it is not just an action or war story with robots. In my opinion this is a mark of good scifi. Apart from that Bannister creates interesting, sneaky, deliciously gruesome, humane, cute and fun characters, credible aliens and delicious plot twists.
Take the ‘hollowed races’: athletes whose entrails have been reduced to the absolute minimum in order to bring their weight down and their running speed up. For life support they depend on machinery they bring along in a kind of floating balloon. Just before the race they are flooded with oxigen and stimulants for optimal performance, after which they must hurry back to their life support balloon.
Iron Gods is nominally the second installation of a trilogy but it is just a separate story set in the same universe. It is not a sequel to anything and can be read stand-alone. In my opinion Andrew Bannister’s The Spin is the heir to Iain M. Banks’ Culture series. Like with part one we must not compare one to the other but it is definitively safe to say that if you like Reynolds’ and Banks’ space opera you will absolutely massively enjoy Bannister’s The Spin books.
Criticism on Bannister’s space opera sometimes is that the book is overly long but I think the different points of view and the characters’ background stories are contributing a lot to The Spin’s resolution, its credibility.
These and other examples of what we would call bizarre practises are the decor of the Culturesque story Bannister is delivering: the theft of an enormous space cruiser changes the political reality in The Spin. The cruiser is a ten thousand year old decommissioned war ship with its own ideas and agenda.
Bannister is describing events from first persons’ views: the thieves; the slaves; political leaders; and people in a declining society, who have made a religion based upon the old war ships, taking them for gods.
The scifi in this story is essential: it is not just an action or war story with robots. In my opinion this is a mark of good scifi. Apart from that Bannister creates interesting, sneaky, deliciously gruesome, humane, cute and fun characters, credible aliens and delicious plot twists.
Take the ‘hollowed races’: athletes whose entrails have been reduced to the absolute minimum in order to bring their weight down and their running speed up. For life support they depend on machinery they bring along in a kind of floating balloon. Just before the race they are flooded with oxigen and stimulants for optimal performance, after which they must hurry back to their life support balloon.
Iron Gods is nominally the second installation of a trilogy but it is just a separate story set in the same universe. It is not a sequel to anything and can be read stand-alone. In my opinion Andrew Bannister’s The Spin is the heir to Iain M. Banks’ Culture series. Like with part one we must not compare one to the other but it is definitively safe to say that if you like Reynolds’ and Banks’ space opera you will absolutely massively enjoy Bannister’s The Spin books.
Criticism on Bannister’s space opera sometimes is that the book is overly long but I think the different points of view and the characters’ background stories are contributing a lot to The Spin’s resolution, its credibility.
April 19, 2019
I wasn't expecting much when I dragged this off the library shelf, but I had just slogged my way through Gnomon by Nick Harkaway, and I felt I should reward myself for two weeks hard labour with a light space opera I could knock off before the social necessities of the Easter weekend.
I did NOT expect a book which reminded me in tenor and quality of the best of Iain M Banks!
I read it much too quickly, but will probably buy the series (hopefully not a "trilogy", but like the Culture novels, varied stories set in a shared universe) to reread at leisure.
I love complex, flash-back and -forward "mystery stories, where the elements of the plot are concealed then revealed surprisingly, adding an extra dimension of unexpected (techno)logical deus ex machina. Some readers will doubtless be offput by this jarring style, which requires concentration and memory, but then, they can stick with their Mills & Boon stories, or if they want SF, the Merchant Princes pot-boilers written by Charlie Stross rather than his superb Accelerando and Glasshouse.
Personally, after reading this I immediately obtained and devoured Andrew Bannister's debut, Creation Machine (which is not really the first of a trilogy, however Goodreads chooses to class it, although it is a good idea to read it before Iron Gods) and am currently awaiting in excited anticipation the arrival of Stone Clock.
So thank you Mr Bannister, for writing about your sadistic teachers and putting them into ultimately fatal positions of planetary power, rather than taking what might have been the easy route and writing eco-thrillers; leave that sort of thing to your day-job and Kim Stanley Robinson.
I did NOT expect a book which reminded me in tenor and quality of the best of Iain M Banks!
I read it much too quickly, but will probably buy the series (hopefully not a "trilogy", but like the Culture novels, varied stories set in a shared universe) to reread at leisure.
I love complex, flash-back and -forward "mystery stories, where the elements of the plot are concealed then revealed surprisingly, adding an extra dimension of unexpected (techno)logical deus ex machina. Some readers will doubtless be offput by this jarring style, which requires concentration and memory, but then, they can stick with their Mills & Boon stories, or if they want SF, the Merchant Princes pot-boilers written by Charlie Stross rather than his superb Accelerando and Glasshouse.
Personally, after reading this I immediately obtained and devoured Andrew Bannister's debut, Creation Machine (which is not really the first of a trilogy, however Goodreads chooses to class it, although it is a good idea to read it before Iron Gods) and am currently awaiting in excited anticipation the arrival of Stone Clock.
So thank you Mr Bannister, for writing about your sadistic teachers and putting them into ultimately fatal positions of planetary power, rather than taking what might have been the easy route and writing eco-thrillers; leave that sort of thing to your day-job and Kim Stanley Robinson.
July 6, 2020
A 250 page novel with a 750 page plot. The story wants to document revolution, but what is on the page is too scattered and disconnected to work. Even when big things happen, it lacks the context to make those things resonate in the story. Whole sections turn out to be either unnecessary to the resolution or ill-described. Other events referred to in indirect comments would be interesting to explore but are not. Incomplete political tensions and machinations drift in and shift like we're watching a short news report. Only two characters have any real arc or development and they do not meet each other in the book. Lots of settings, places or ships that we are told are 1,000-10,000 years old without there being any weight or much significance to that history.
What did I like? Despite the ridiculous description (two cones separated by a cylinder) and that it did almost nothing in the story, the sentient ship and its history was an awesome concept. Bannister's development of the Vut and Clo Fiffithiss as non - humanoid aliens are fantastic. The story is readable despite the notable flaws. I might try this author again at some point.
What did I like? Despite the ridiculous description (two cones separated by a cylinder) and that it did almost nothing in the story, the sentient ship and its history was an awesome concept. Bannister's development of the Vut and Clo Fiffithiss as non - humanoid aliens are fantastic. The story is readable despite the notable flaws. I might try this author again at some point.
August 29, 2023
Oh I really want to love this series - the imaginary mind and world building are superb and the incarnation of political mayhem amongst the stars intrigues - and some excellent baddies work well. But ultimately something is missing - and it is probably in the title. The expectations set when you have artificial galaxies and spaceship AI in the skies is never quite met in the narrative. Plus plot wise is gets tricky. On with the third one…
November 30, 2017
A good read. Space opera with a twist of cruelty. The writing was tight. The characters and scenes defined and engaging. It got vague towards the end when trying to tie it all together. Reading the first one might have made it easier to understand. Still a ripping yarn
October 7, 2018
It's not a bad book, but is's Universe and the many places could get the reader confusing. Especially since there is to less background to be a stand-alone book. Sadly it's not to seduce me to read the other books.
March 4, 2019
As with the first Spin novel this felt like it needed to be longer
June 8, 2023
Frenetic. Frantic. All thriller no filler. Sometimes a bit incomprehensible. But still enjoyable.
October 17, 2019
A nice surprise by an author new to me. I will search out the rest of this trilogy and read it as a result.
- recommended by library
- recommended by library
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews