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Excession
- Culture Series, Book 5
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 15 hrs and 55 mins
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Publisher's Summary
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
Critic Reviews
"Gripping, touching and funny." (TLS)
"A dizzying adventure." (Daily Mail)
"Explosive but tender." (Sunday Times)
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What listeners say about Excession
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 14-12-2017
Favourite culture novel
Awesome. Very well crafted. suspense. action. the lot. read very well, infodumps clear and quickly passed through, accents great.
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- Chris O'Neill
- 25-02-2016
A rollicking Culture Novel
Loved it - Banks' humour comes out loud and clear in Kenny's excellent narration and voice craft. Highly recommended!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Raf Trigger
- 18-04-2024
Complex and extremely creative
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.
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- Gareth
- 17-12-2017
It's a great book
the only issue is that the communication between the ships Minds may be hard for some to follow but it's totally worth it.
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- Jacob
- 07-04-2016
pretty good but suffers from transfer to audio.
this novel would be more enjoyably in print because of the technical text devices it uses.
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- Anonymous User
- 02-02-2022
Classic Banks
Probably the best of the Culture novels. Recommend that you read “Consider Phlebas “ first but not essential.
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-10-2022
Most re-listened book in my library
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.
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- Anonymous User
- 26-10-2020
Brain strain
I bought the hard copy years ago cause I’m a big fan of Ian Banks’ non sci-fi books. I got a few chapters in and gave up cause I found it difficult to follow and get a clear picture where what was going on, I.e. which drone was which or AI. Then there was the endless pages of AI code language which I found super tedious.
So though if I got the audio book I’d be able to follow better and get a clearer picture into the story. I was wrong, I gave up at the same point I did in the copy.
This book for me is Boring and complicated.
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- Anonymous User
- 24-12-2021
Not a good fit for an Audio book.
The story itself was quite good, and it was well read, however all the dates and times and other meta-data attached to the Mind's conversations are really long... Like inflating a 10 line conversation to about 15 minutes kind of long. He reads out every dot and number. Fine for a book, but bad for an audio book. I would recommend just reading this one.
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- Elliot
- 21-08-2018
Not the best in the series
The Culture series so far has been a wonderful and deep exploration into Banks’ universe, full of incredible characters and stories. However, I found Excession left a little to be desired. I felt that the author tried to set up too many plot points and characters, to the point of some seeming entirely pointless.
The book wasn’t terrible, but I found it to be a little tedious and lacked the excitement of his other entries. The premise was interesting and I expected an exciting story, however it fell flat through most of the book.
On a positive note, Kenny’s performance is, as always, wonderful.
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