A superb standalone novel from the awesome imagination of Iain M. Banks, a master of modern science fiction.

It is 4034 AD. Humanity has made it to the stars. Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year.

The Nasqueron Dwellers inhabit a gas giant on the outskirts of the galaxy, in a system awaiting its wormhole connection to the rest of civilisation. In the meantime, they are dismissed as decadents living in a state of highly developed barbarism, hoarding data without order, hunting their own young and fighting pointless formal wars.

Seconded to a military-religious order he's barely heard of - part of the baroque hierarchy of the Mercatoria, the latest galactic hegemony - Fassin Taak has to travel again amongst the Dwellers. He is in search of a secret hidden for half a billion years. But with each day that passes a war draws closer - a war that threatens to overwhelm everything and everyone he's ever known.

As complex, turbulent and spectacular as the gas giant on which it is set, this novel from Iain M. Banks is space opera on a truly epic scale.

Praise for Iain M. Banks:

'Epic in scope, ambitious in its ideas and absorbing in its execution' Independent on Sunday

'Banks has created one of the most enduring and endearing visions of the future' Guardian

'Jam-packed with extraordinary invention' Scotsman

'Compulsive reading' Sunday Telegraph

The Culture series:
Consider Phlebas
The Player of Games
Use of Weapons
The State of the Art
Excession
Inversions
Look to Windward
Matter
Surface Detail
The Hydrogen Sonata

Other books by Iain M. Banks:
Against a Dark Background
Feersum Endjinn
The Algebraist

* Backed by major mainstream consumer advertising to include Adrail and London Underground activity plus extra activity in Scotland * Ongoing author PR activity to include media interviews, events and Edinburgh Book Festival * Available as an audio book * For more information visit the author's website at www.iainbanks.net * Poster available

About the Author
Iain Banks (1954-2013) came to widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his first novel, The Wasp Factory, in 1984. Consider Phlebas, his first science fiction novel, was published under the name Iain M. Banks in 1987 and began his celebrated ten-book Culture series. He is acclaimed as one of the most powerful, innovative and exciting writers of his generation.

Reviews
There is now no British SF writer to whose work I look forward with greater keenness * The TIMES *
Confirms Banks as the standard by which the rest of SF is judged * The GUARDIAN *
Explosive * Sunday TIMES *
Gripping, touching and funny * T.L.S. *



Book Information
ISBN 9781841492292
Author Iain M. Banks
Format Paperback
Page Count 544
Imprint Orbit
Publisher Little, Brown Book Group
Weight(grams) 413g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 130mm * 34mm