Feersum endjinn

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Count Sessine is about to die for the last time. Chief Scientist Gadfium is about to receive the mysterious message she has been waiting for from the Plain of Sliding Stones. Bascule the Teller, in search of an ant, is about to enter the chaos of the crypt. And everything is about to change. 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 advisors know it, yet still they prosecute the war with the Engineers with increasing savagery. The crypt knows it too; so an emissary has been sent, an emissary who holds the key to all their futures. Feersum Enjinn is an imaginative tour de force, a stunning novel of bravery and hope, fear and betrayal, strangeness and charm in the face of darkness: it is Iain M Banks at his unparalleled best. Amazon.com Review In a future where the ancients have long since departed Earth for the stars, those left behind live complacent lives filled with technological marvels they no longer understand. Then a cosmic threat known as the Encroachment begins a devastating ice age on Earth, and it sets in motion a series of events that will bring together a cast of original characters who must struggle through war, political intrigues and age-old mysteries to save the world. (B 4worned, 1 oph Banx' carrokters theenx en funetic inglish, which makes for some tough reading but also some innovative prose.) From All is not well in the mammoth, multitiered underground city-state of Serehfa, where the king and his clan are waging an inexplicable battle with the engineer clan. Meanwhile, the entire planet anxiously awaits the arrival of a dust cloud headed for the sun--a development called the encroachment that threatens to plunge Earth into a life-extinguishing ice age. Having abandoned long ago the means and expertise to flee into space, humanity's only hope for technological deliverance is the crypt, a ubiquitous computer mainframe that stores all recorded knowledge, including the downloaded minds of the dead, but which has been almost totally corrupted by viral chaos. Defying the king's bewildering lack of concern for the encroachment, a rebel scientist, a dead officer living on in the virtuality of the crypt, and a semiliterate youth try to penetrate the crypt's chaotic levels and retrieve the needed knowledge before it's too late. Banks' skill at high-tech speculation continues to grow. Every page of this, his most ingenious work yet, seems to offer more dazzling, intriguing ideas. Carl Hays