Review of 'Inversions' by Iain M Banks

When I struggled through 'Excession' by the same author, a friend who had similarly found Excession difficult, recommended to me that I read Inversions. I am glad I listened to his recommendation. Inversions was a very enjoyable read.

Where other Iain M Banks novels suffer from lack of characterisation, over-verbosity and too much love of AI, Inversions is almost the opposite. To the uninitiated, it would read as a curious fantasy story of mysterious and seemingly unrelated events across two kingdoms. To those in the know, it is a novel about the Culture, in disguise. Told from the point of view of the affected, the meddled-with, Inversions tells two stories. One narrator is apprentice to a Doctor who brings medical knowledge far in advance of what is known at the time. The other tells the story of the bodyguard to another leader of a different regime on the same world.

Usually I am most impressed with Iain M Bank's aliens, and while there was a hint of this in his world-building, all the people in it were very much people. His characterisation was stronger in this novel than I've seen in any of his other science fiction, with the possible exception of 'Consider Phlebas'. The apprentice, Oelph tells his story as loyal servant, loyal apprentice, and as a man who has a great deal of affection for the subject of his narrations. Doctor Vosill herself has a great deal of character; she brings progress and change and controvesial opinions as she acts as physician to the king.

On the other side of the sea, the bodyguard DeWar and the cast of characters in his story, are likewise well-rounded and developed as people. DeWar struck me as a conflicted and fervently loyal man. As his story unfolds, he tells a series of stories that sound remarkably familiar to anyone who knows anything about the Culture. The concubine Perrund, the Protector and his son, all have their own strong personalities, in many different ways. It was easy to follow their stories, and to care about the outcome.

Telling the story from the perspective of those who are being manipulated is an interesting twist, and provided me with the viewpoint of the Culture that I enjoyed from Consider Phlebas. In the earlier work, the Culture was the enemy and it was never made clear whether they were the force for good or evil. Inversions returns to that ambiguity, and allows the knowing reader to enjoy the thought experiments that Vosill and DeWar present.

The characters, the story-telling and the interesting plot intersections and parallels made Inversions a compelling read. It was a lot easier to digest than some of Banks' other stories, and because it was primarily about small groups of people rather than whole civilisations I found myself able to really enjoy it as a science-fiction fantasy crossover story. It wasn't trying so hard to be clever that it forgot to be good, and it wasn't striving so hard for moral discussion that it forgot to be interesting. These things all conspired to make Inversions a brilliant book, with enough depth and plot-interest to keep attention throughout its pages.