The Steep Approach to Garbadale

Iain Banks (aka. Iain M. Banks) never fails to impress. I started reading his Sci Fi a few years ago when someone said "you should read these Banks' Culture novels - they'd be your sort of thing", and whoever that kind recommender was, was exactly right. I had kind of gone off reading actual Science Fiction for a few years there, concentrating my efforts on History, Horror, and Fantasy, and Banks (and then Stross) dragged me back into the fold.

Banks writes two kinds of books, different enough that he has the slightly different pen names, with and without the M. His Science Fiction, under Iain M Banks, is mind-blisteringly* broad in scope. As I've said before, I've got a background in Math and Science, and bad Science in Sci Fi irritates me. I'm happy with logical science and different laws of physics based on currently-undiscovered scientific principles; but random laws of physics that aren't consistently applied, or stupid applications of real laws irk me. Banks is one of those authors whose physics is spot on.

But that is an aside. The Steep Approach to Garbadale isn't one of his science fiction books. It's the other kind - the well-written fiction novel. A lot of these books steer of at least a little into the fantastical of horrific, but this is a novel clearly set in our world, with real and flawed characters, and reflects on the politics of our time - or at least, our time two years ago; it sits solidly in the Bush era, and the characters reflect on and rail against US imperialism. I found it quite gripping, and on occasions hard to put down. It's a little more normal for me to not put a book down because a stupendously powerful star cruiser is about to chop up an Orbital with billions of people living on it; not being able to put down a book because Alban was about to go fishing with his cousin Sophie and oh my goodness what will transpire between them! was an unusual and pleasant feeling.

So, it's a definite worth-reading book. My problem now is that I can never quite remember which of my Banks non-sci-fi I've read and which I haven't. I've started reading one before on at least one occasion only to discover that I'd red it before. I'll have to go and work it out.

* Oddly enough, my spell-checker is happy with mind-blisteringly, but has an problem with recommender.