The Algebraist - Iain M. Banks

Rarely have I had the honor to read such a boring book. It took me forever to finish it, as you can see, only so I can blog about how unreadable it is. It's not like Iain Banks doesn't have the good ideas that make a book great, but he has no idea on how to use them.

The entire book had the feel it was patched together from pieces of text written with completely different moods by different people. The ideas shifted from one to the other without any sense. The science was ludicrous. And worst of all, the ending had that wonderful "huh?" feeling, when all the plot finally ends just as boringly as it has begun.

And all this in a book that talks about the Universe in the far future, with great empires spanning galaxies and fighting epic battles with weird technologies. I appreciate the effort, but not the result. The book seems like something a writer would do and throw away and a publicist would pick up from the garbage and publish.