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Excession

Culture Series, Book 5

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Excession

By: Iain M. Banks
Narrated by: Peter Kenny
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About this listen

The novels of Iain M. Banks have forever changed the face of modern science fiction. His Culture books combine breathtaking imagination with exceptional storytelling, and have secured his reputation as one of the most extraordinary and influential writers in the genre.

Two and a half millennia ago in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe, the artifact appeared.

It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared.

Now it is back.

Diplomat Genar-Hofoen of Special Circumstances is sent to investigate but, sidetracked by an old flame and the spoiled-brat operative Ulver Seich, and faced with the systematic depravities of a race who call themselves the A­ffront, it's anyone's guess whether he'll succeed . . .

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

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

©1996 Iain M. Banks (P)2013 Hachette Digital Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Science Fiction

Critic Reviews

"Gripping, touching and funny." (TLS)

"A dizzying adventure." (Daily Mail)

"Explosive but tender." (Sunday Times)
All stars
Most relevant
Awesome. Very well crafted. suspense. action. the lot. read very well, infodumps clear and quickly passed through, accents great.

Favourite culture novel

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Loved it - Banks' humour comes out loud and clear in Kenny's excellent narration and voice craft. Highly recommended!

A rollicking Culture Novel

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Fantastic book but not very easy to follow the first time I listened to the book, as there is a lot of characters. Not a great introduction to banks’ work if you haven’t read his other previous works on ‘the culture’ but if you are obsessed like me it is a fascinating and stunningly complex and unique Novel that I thoroughly enjoyed listening to, especially the second time over.

Complex and extremely creative

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If you’ve read this far in the series, you know what to expect. I appreciated the focus on Minds as characters — they’re some of the most entertaining in the series. The entirety of the book does suffer a little from being an audiobook with lots of logs and messages that have surrounding details one would skim in physical form. Overall recommend, especially with the narration being top quality.

Another solid culture novel

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Iain M Banks classic tale of ship minds and space opera, with a great voice actor.

loved the characterisation.

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As I write this, the world is clamouring about Generative AI, ChatGPT, and LLMs. Iain M. Banks foretold all of this decades ago, and Excession is a wonderful elaboration of his foresight. This is an epic Culture novel, full of plots and intrigue at a galactic level, and enacted by minds of an almost inconceivable capacity. Thoroughly enjoyable, even more so with the excellent narration by Peter Kenny. 10/10

A masterpiece of science fiction

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the only issue is that the communication between the ships Minds may be hard for some to follow but it's totally worth it.

It's a great book

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this novel would be more enjoyably in print because of the technical text devices it uses.

pretty good but suffers from transfer to audio.

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Probably the best of the Culture novels. Recommend that you read “Consider Phlebas “ first but not essential.

Classic Banks

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Absolute genius, as a human story, an alien romp, a mystery, a romantic tale, a political conspiracy, and high-tech space opera.
Many times I have reached the end, and gone back to the beginning to listen again.

Most re-listened book in my library

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