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Interviews
S.J. Parris
S.J. Parris writes about her inspiration for Heresy, which masterfully blends true events with fiction into a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
John Hart
In a letter to his readers, John Hart talks about becoming a writer and the challenges he faced in writing The Last Child.
Adam Haslett
A conversation with Adam Haslett, author of Union Atlantic, a deeply affecting portrait of the modern gilded age, the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Sarah Blake
Sarah Blake talks about her inspiration for The Postmistress, set in Europe and Cape Cod in 1940.
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   Summary and Book Reviews

Inversions: Summary and book reviews of Inversions by Iain Banks, plus links to an excerpt from Inversions and a biography of Iain Banks.

Inversions Inversions
by Iain M. Banks
Hardcover: Jan 2000,
352 pages.
Paperback: May 2001,
384 pages.

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Critics' Opinion:   good
Readers' Rating:  Not Rated
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Book Summary

Iain M. Banks, the international bestselling author of The Player of Games and Consider Phlebas, is a true original, a literary visionary whose brilliant speculative fiction has transported us into worlds of unbounded imagination. Now, in his acclaimed new novel, Banks presents an engrossing portrait of an alien world, and of two very different people bound by a startling and mysterious secret.

On a backward world with six moons, an alert spy reports on the doings of one Dr. Vosill, who has mysteriously become the personal physician to the king despite being a foreigner and, even more unthinkably, a woman. Vosill has more enemies than she first realizes. But then she also has more remedies in hand than those who wish her ill can ever guess.

Elsewhere, in another palace across the mountains, a man named DeWar serves as chief bodyguard to the Protector General of Tassasen, a profession he describes as the business of "assassinating assassins." DeWar, too, has his enemies, but his foes strike more swiftly, and his means of combating them are more direct.

No one trusts the doctor, and the bodyguard trusts no one, but is there a hidden commonality linking their disparate histories? Spiraling around a central core of mystery, deceit, love, and betrayal. Inversions is a dazzling work of science fiction from a versatile and imaginative author writing at the height of his remarkable powers.

Book Reviews


Good  Locus
A talent to be reckoned with.

Good  SFX
Iain Banks is a tricky fellow. Watch carefully as he assures you there's nothing up his sleeve.

Good  Locus
A talent to be reckoned with.

Good  Los Angeles Times
Banks never does the same thing twice. But he always does it sublimely.

Good  SFX
Iain Banks is a tricky fellow. Watch carefully as he assures you there's nothing up his sleeve.

Good  Los Angeles Times
Banks never does the same thing twice. But he always does it sublimely.

Good  The Detroit News
A genuine and original talent.

Author Blurb  William Gibson, author of Neuromancer
Banks is a phenomenon. Wildly successful, fearlessly creative!

Author Blurb  Vernor Vinge, author of A Fire Upon the Deep
Inversions is a magical interplay of viewpoint and simplicity. At different levels we find the romance of medieval royalty, the horrors that lie below it, and the prospect of a civilization transforming itself into something marvelously better.

Author Blurb  Vernor Vinge, author of A Fire Upon the Deep
Inversions is a magical interplay of viewpoint and simplicity. At different levels we find the romance of medieval royalty, the horrors that lie below it, and the prospect of a civilization transforming itself into something marvelously better.

Author Blurb  David Brin, author of the Uplift series
Iain M. Banks has a deep grasp of story, character, and the irony of this strange life that humans are born into. He is a master at portraying the terror and poignant joy that swirl whenever people open their horizons and start to see their dreams come true.

Author Blurb  Vernor Vinge
Iain M. Banks' novels are subtle and spectacular.

Author Blurb  David Brin, author of the Uplift series
Iain M. Banks has a deep grasp of story, character, and the irony of this strange life that humans are born into. He is a master at portraying the terror and poignant joy that swirl whenever people open their horizons and start to see their dreams come true.

Author Blurb  William Gibson, author of Neuromancer
Banks is a phenomenon. Wildly successful, fearlessly creative!

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