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Review title: first-draft sludge
Product review: Warning sign: by page 200, NOTHING has happened either in this book or in the author's head to give us a hint where the story will go. The above blurb: "...Banks is a true original...whose brilliant speculative fiction has transported us into worlds of unbounded imagination and inimitable revelatory power" is the real Affront. It kills me how readers of science fiction are so easily pleased by any piece of kitsch that centers around, like wow, a rip in the fabric of spacetime. Totally. Throw in some multi-limbed aliens who like to play squash, and bingo--some jacket-blurb flack is telling us we're in the presence of a major imagination. Too bad the delete key is beyond him. Obviously Banks has gotten to a point in perceived stature where no editor had the guts to pack this junk in a FedEx overnight with instructions to cut it in half and come up with a real plot.
