REVIEW

Inversions

By Iain M. Banks

Iain Banks is a Scottish writer who sways between Sci-fi and mainstream novels. He is acclaimed in the U.K. and one of the countries best selling Science Fiction writers. Inversions is not a particularly successful account of oddities in a world only existing in fiction but it is still a lucid, addictive book concerning two stories rather than one. An interesting twist when against popular prediction the stories never meet nor intertwine. Their similarities are deeper and in need of more clever seeking.
Inside this world of popular fantasy, medieval romanticisms, and pure-blooded science fiction one story about a Doctor to the King is told by Oelph the servant of the Doctor and another story regarding a loyal-to-death bodyguard and his adventures with the protection of a leader. Each story moves slow and deliberately resembling a series of journal entries or such but never intended as so. Disappointingly, Inversions lacks the lavish descriptions of invented lands usually expected at the hands and key-strokes of Mr. Banks.
Many times the story reverts to very syrupy chapters of a bodyguard playing with a little bratty kid for too many pages, making the faces, noises, and letting the kid win. It is there only as the trite contrast of war and childhood. It quite annoys me in how careless the author was to include such a blatant cliché. As well as the sugar coating the story contains a few aggravating melodramatic scenes of a distraught women releasing her whole life story, blantant