The novels of Iain M. Banks have forever changed the face of modern science fiction. With breathtaking imagination and extraordinary storytelling, they have secured his reputation as one of the most extraordinary and influential writers in the genre.
''Banks is a phenomenon'' William Gibson
It is 4034 AD. Humanity has made it to the stars but Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year.
The Nasqueron Dwellers inhabit a gas giant on the outskirts of the galaxy, in a system awaiting its wormhole connection to the rest of civilisation. In the meantime, they are dismissed as decadents living in a state of highly developed barbarism, hoarding data without order, hunting their own young and fighting pointless formal wars.
Abruptly seconded to a military-religious order he''s barely heard of - part of the baroque hierarchy of the Mercatoria, the latest galactic hegemony -
