Book review: Inversions

Inversions by Iain M. Banks is not a Culture novel, whatever the lying PR folk may tell you. Instead it is very slightly Culture-adjacent; the Doctor and the Bodyguard are tourists from the Culture, one presumes.

Lots of people like Inversions (see Goodreads) but whilst I enjoyed reading it (for the second time in twenty years) I retain the disappointment I felt on first reading it.

The story is well enough written but the prose is uninteresting. Careless fragment: quite a bit of the text is Oelph reporting to his master, but including stuff like "the autumn leaves whirled in the wind" which would be quite out of place in a factual report; it seems like Banks has forgotten what he is supposed to be doing in these bits; or is afraid that his prose will be too prosaic.

I was looking for some more exciting inversion than that was provided. Perrund's late change just isn't desperately dramatic; and if there's one at all on the Doctor's side I missed it.

One Goodreads review noted that he'd wondered if the twin stories were even happening at the same time; that I think would have been a dramatic denoument if it could be managed: the stories happening perhaps a century apart, somehow.

On the (lack of) Culture connection: it seems unlikely the two are working for SC, as they are so desperately unsubtle. They fit better the idea, mentioned in one of the other books, of individuals freebooting.