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The Quarry
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Stonemouth
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
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Stewart Gilmour is back in Stonemouth. After five years in exile, his presence is required at the funeral of patriarch Joe Murston, and even though the last time Stu saw the Murstons he was running for his life, staying away might be even more dangerous than turning up. An estuary town north of Aberdeen, Stonemouth, with its five mile beach, can be beautiful on a sunny day. On a bleak one it can seem to offer little more than sea fog, gangsters, cheap drugs and a suspension bridge irresistible to suicides.
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Revenge and Regret on the Scottish Coast
- By Steve on 28-04-12
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The Bridge
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
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A man lies in a coma after a near-fatal accident. His body broken, his memory vanished, he finds himself in the surreal world of the bridge - a world free of the usual constraints of time and space, a world where dream and fantasy, past and future, fuse. Who is this man? Where is he? Is he more dead than alive? Or has he never been so alive before?
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Interesting but thin on plot
- By Stuart on 04-09-15
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Dead Air
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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A couple of ice cubes first, then the apple that really started it all. A loft apartment in London's East End; cool but doomed - demolition and redevelopment slated fro the following week. Ken Nott, devoutly contrarian leftish shock-jock attending a mid-week wedding lunch, starts dropping stuff off the rood towards the deserted car park 100 feet below. Other guests join in and soon half the contents of the flat are following the fruit towards the pitted tarmac... just as mobiles start to ring, and the apartment's remaining TV is turned on, because apparently a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center....
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Some of Iain Banks best writing
- By "hodsonc" on 08-05-16
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Espedair Street
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Daniel Weir used to be a famous - not to say infamous - rock star. Maybe still is. At thirty-one he has been both a brilliant failure and a dull success. He's made a lot of mistakes that have paid off and a lot of smart moves he'll regret forever (however long that turns out to be). Daniel Weir has gone from rags to riches and back, and managed to hold onto them both, though not much else. His friends all seem to be dead, fed up with him or just disgusted - and who can blame them? And now Daniel Weir is all alone.
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Breathtaking
- By Zara on 14-05-17
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The Steep Approach to Garbadale
- By: Iain Banks
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The Wopuld family built their fortune on a board game called Empire, now a wildly successful computer game. So successful, in fact, that the American Spraint Corp wants to buy the Wopulds out. Alban, who has been evading the family tentacles for the last few years, thinks Spraint should be treated with suspicion, but he also has other things on his mind. What, for example, drove his mother to take her own life?
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Very enjoyable
- By Jane on 20-06-07
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The Crow Road
- By: Iain Banks
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- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
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It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach's Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach. Prentice McHoan has returned to the bosom of his complex but enduring Scottish family. Full of questions about the McHoan past, present and future, he is also deeply preoccupied: mainly with death, sex, drink, God, and illegal substances.…
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Highly enjoyable
- By Rachel on 07-04-13
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Stonemouth
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Stewart Gilmour is back in Stonemouth. After five years in exile, his presence is required at the funeral of patriarch Joe Murston, and even though the last time Stu saw the Murstons he was running for his life, staying away might be even more dangerous than turning up. An estuary town north of Aberdeen, Stonemouth, with its five mile beach, can be beautiful on a sunny day. On a bleak one it can seem to offer little more than sea fog, gangsters, cheap drugs and a suspension bridge irresistible to suicides.
-
-
Revenge and Regret on the Scottish Coast
- By Steve on 28-04-12
-
The Bridge
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A man lies in a coma after a near-fatal accident. His body broken, his memory vanished, he finds himself in the surreal world of the bridge - a world free of the usual constraints of time and space, a world where dream and fantasy, past and future, fuse. Who is this man? Where is he? Is he more dead than alive? Or has he never been so alive before?
-
-
Interesting but thin on plot
- By Stuart on 04-09-15
-
Dead Air
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A couple of ice cubes first, then the apple that really started it all. A loft apartment in London's East End; cool but doomed - demolition and redevelopment slated fro the following week. Ken Nott, devoutly contrarian leftish shock-jock attending a mid-week wedding lunch, starts dropping stuff off the rood towards the deserted car park 100 feet below. Other guests join in and soon half the contents of the flat are following the fruit towards the pitted tarmac... just as mobiles start to ring, and the apartment's remaining TV is turned on, because apparently a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center....
-
-
Some of Iain Banks best writing
- By "hodsonc" on 08-05-16
-
Espedair Street
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Daniel Weir used to be a famous - not to say infamous - rock star. Maybe still is. At thirty-one he has been both a brilliant failure and a dull success. He's made a lot of mistakes that have paid off and a lot of smart moves he'll regret forever (however long that turns out to be). Daniel Weir has gone from rags to riches and back, and managed to hold onto them both, though not much else. His friends all seem to be dead, fed up with him or just disgusted - and who can blame them? And now Daniel Weir is all alone.
-
-
Breathtaking
- By Zara on 14-05-17
-
The Steep Approach to Garbadale
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Wopuld family built their fortune on a board game called Empire, now a wildly successful computer game. So successful, in fact, that the American Spraint Corp wants to buy the Wopulds out. Alban, who has been evading the family tentacles for the last few years, thinks Spraint should be treated with suspicion, but he also has other things on his mind. What, for example, drove his mother to take her own life?
-
-
Very enjoyable
- By Jane on 20-06-07
-
The Crow Road
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach's Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach. Prentice McHoan has returned to the bosom of his complex but enduring Scottish family. Full of questions about the McHoan past, present and future, he is also deeply preoccupied: mainly with death, sex, drink, God, and illegal substances.…
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Highly enjoyable
- By Rachel on 07-04-13
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The Wasp Factory
- By: Iain Banks
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- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
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The Wasp Factory is a bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath - one of the most infamous of contemporary Scottish novels.
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PERFECT
- By GOGS on 14-10-08
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Transition
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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A world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse, such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organisation with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers?
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Audio book of the year
- By Mike on 10-11-09
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Whit
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Helen McAlpine
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Innocent in the ways of the world, an ingenue when it comes to pop and fashion, the Elect of God of a small but committed Stirlingshire religious cult: Isis Whit is no ordinary teenager. When her cousin Morag - Guest of Honour at the Luskentyrian's four-yearly Festival of Love - disappears after renouncing her faith, Isis is marked out to venture among the Unsaved and bring the apostate back into the fold.
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Great power woman tale
- By Amazon Customer on 28-04-18
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Complicity
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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A few spliffs, a spot of mild S&M, phone through the copy of tomorrow's front page, catch up with the latest from your mystery source - could be big, could be very big - in fact, just a regular day at the office for free-wheeling, substance-abusing Cameron Colley, a fully paid-up Gonzo hack on an Edinburgh newspaper. The source is pretty thin, but Cameron senses a scoop and checks out a series of bizarre deaths from a few years ago - only to find that the police are checking out a series of bizarre deaths that are happening right now. And Cameron just might know more about it than he'd care to admit.…
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Why do I like this so much? ....
- By Alison on 07-06-13
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Canal Dreams
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Lisa Coleman
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Hisako Onoda, world famous cellist, refuses to fly. And so she travels to Europe as a passenger on a tanker bound through the Panama Canal. But Panama is a country whose politics are as volatile as the local freedom fighters. When Hisako's ship is captured, it is not long before the atmostphere is as flammable as an oxy-acetylene torch, and the tension as sharp as the spike on the cello....
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Canal Nightmares!
- By Annie on 23-11-14
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Walking On Glass
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Her eyes were black, wide as though with some sustained surprise, the skin from their outer corners to her small ears taut. Her lips were pale, and nearly too full for her small mouth, like something bled but bruised. He had never seen anyone or anything quite so beautiful in his life. Graham Park is in love. But Sara Fitch is an enigma to him, a creature of almost perverse mystery. Steven Grout is paranoid - and with justice. He knows that They are out to get him.
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Not his best and a little confusing
- By Stuart on 17-04-15
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The Business
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Harriet Kershaw
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Kate Telman is a senior executive officer in The Business, a powerful and massively discreet transglobal organisation whose origins predate the Christian Church. Financially transparent, internally democratic it wants to buy its own state in order to acquire a seat at the United Nations. Kate's job is to keep abreast of current technological developments and her global reach encompasses Silicon Valley to the remote Himalayas.
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Yet another good read
- By Simon on 23-06-15
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A Song of Stone
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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The war is ending, perhaps ended. For the castle and its occupants the troubles are just beginning. Armed gangs roam a lawless land where each farm and house supports a column of dark smoke. Taking to the roads with the other refugees, anonymous in their raggedness, seems safer than remaining in the ancient keep. However, the lieutenant of an outlaw band has other ideas and the castle becomes the focus for a dangerous game of desire, deceit and death.
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iain banks can do no wrong, apart from dying ...
- By angels on 28-04-18
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Consider Phlebas
- Culture Series, Book 1
- By: Iain M. Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 16 hrs and 25 mins
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The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction - cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade....
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A Truly Great Sci-Fi Novel
- By scotty on 09-04-12
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A Decent Ride
- By: Irvine Welsh
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A rampaging force of nature is wreaking havoc on the streets of Edinburgh, but has top shagger, drug dealer, gonzo-porn star and taxi driver, ‘Juice’ Terry Lawson finally met his match in Hurricane ‘Bawbag’?Can Terry discover the fate of the missing beauty, Jinty Magdalen, and keep her idiot-savant lover, the man-child Wee Jonty, out of prison? Will he find out the real motives of unscrupulous American businessman and reality-TV star Ronald Checker?
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Decent ride is decent enough
- By Amazon Customer on 20-07-15
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The Algebraist
- By: Iain M. Banks
- Narrated by: Geoff Annis
- Length: 24 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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For short-lived races like humans, space is dominated by the complicated, grandiose Mercatoria. To the Dwellers who may live billions of years, the galaxy consists of their gas-giant planets - the rest is debris. Fassin Taak is a Slow Seer privileged to work with the Dwellers of the gas-giant Nasqueron. His work consists of rummaging for data in their vast, disorganised memories and libraries. Unfortunately, without knowing it, he's come close to an ancient secret of unimaginable importance.
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Hooray and oh dear.
- By Toadjuggler on 03-02-18
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Under the Eagle
- Eagles of the Empire, Book 1
- By: Simon Scarrow
- Narrated by: David Thorpe
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
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The first novel in Simon Scarrow's bestselling Roman series. It is 42 AD, and Quintus Licinius Cato has just arrived in Germany as a new recruit to the Second Legion, the toughest in the Roman army. If adjusting to the rigours of military life isn't difficult enough for the bookish young man, he also has to contend with the disgust of his colleagues when, because of his imperial connections, he is appointed a rank above them.
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A Brilliant Series - but incomplete!
- By Simon on 24-08-15
Summary
Kit doesn't know who his mother is. What he does know, however, is that his father, Guy, is dying of cancer. Feeling his death is imminent, Guy gathers around him his oldest friends - or at least the friends with the most to lose by his death. Paul - the rising star in the Labour party who dreads the day a tape they all made at university might come to light; Alison and Robbie, corporate bunnies whose relationship is daily more fractious; Pris and Haze, once an item, now estranged, and finally Hol - friend, mentor, former lover and the only one who seemed to care.
But what will happen to Kit when Guy is gone? And why isn't Kit's mother in the picture? As the friends reunite for Guy's last days, old jealousies, affairs and lies come to light as Kit watches on.
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- Bammosan
- 15-07-13
Excellent narration of Iain's last book
What made the experience of listening to The Quarry the most enjoyable?
the narration and the steely response to cancer with a touch of rage into the night with humour and understanding
Who was your favorite character and why?
the son
What does Peter Kenny bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?
brings out the individual characters of the protagonist and the friends and especially his father
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
yes
Any additional comments?
just thanks to all involved especially Iain Banks and Peter Kenny
3 of 3 people found this review helpful
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- Dr Zube
- Ross on Wye, United Kingdom
- 24-04-15
Ok but characters you grow to hate
Started well but the let down is the story I am afraid to say, charterers I eventually either hated or didn't care about. Disappointing but good narration and some redeeming features, I.e. kit in particular
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
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- Cathy
- Oxford, UK
- 15-07-13
Iain Banks last novel
Would you listen to The Quarry again? Why?
Iain Bank wrote this book then announced he too had cancer and died shortly before this book was rushed through and published.
This will not be the first or last. He is a great storyteller and writer. One of the 20th century greats.
What did you like best about this story?
He has a great way of bringing together his characters.
Which character – as performed by Peter Kenny – was your favourite?
Kit - he is intelligent so insightful.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
all of it
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
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- A. Cairns
- scotland
- 08-07-13
Gives understanding of disability.
If you could sum up The Quarry in three words, what would they be?
Understanding of illnesses.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Kit. Thinking about what was going on in the story and Kit being such a young boy who was the main carer of Guy, his father, made me feel that as a young man he was able to pass on a lot.
Have you listened to any of Peter Kenny’s other performances? How does this one compare?
Not sure I've listened to any before but my memory is terrible so maybe I have. It was very expressive and I got a lot out of his voice.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Would have liked to do that but because of family commitments I wasn't able to.
Any additional comments?
I'm very glad that I heard about the book which was obviously hyped a lot in Scotland with Iain Banks being Scots and then dying, so I'm glad that I got a hold of it and listened to it. I knew Iain Banks was a top author and this book was another top story.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
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- J. A. Croucher
- stockwood, bristol United Kingdom
- 07-07-13
An excellent listen for a sunny day
I could listen to Peter Kenny read almost anything, I love his way. Combined with another great observation of the human condition from Iain Banks the experience is great.
I lay in the garden for two days in listening heaven with breaks for people, drinks and food, what more could you ask for.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
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- Kieron
- London, UK
- 02-07-13
Goodbye Mr Banks.
Like many, I mourn the loss of one of our greatest writers; Iain Banks. So, I’m biased, I admit it. Despite my bias, this is a great novel. For the Banksians out there, the story is written from the perspective of a teenage boy; like Wasp Factory. The flow is quick with political undertones like Crow Road. It’s dark too, like Complicity and The Bridge. It also has that dark humour that’s hidden inside the modern dysfunctional family, Garbadale, Stonemouth and Business. In summary, a great finale – you need to listen to this.
One final note, Peter Kenny, he's a perfect choice to narrate Banks' work. He provides the icing on the cake.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
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- R Bligh
- Chesterfield, UK
- 26-11-16
compeling
first book of Ian'# I've read. laughed and cried. disappointed when it was over. now looking for more of his stuff
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- Graeme from Preston
- 27-02-15
Enjoyable but slightly dissapointing
The writing is wonderful and the characters intriguing, but the mystery at the heart of the story is not really resolved well enough in my opinion.
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- Mark
- Banchory, United Kingdom
- 30-07-13
A must read the the devoted Banks fans like me
OK - so the book was not his best, but we need to cut this great guy some slack - he was after all dying before he even started the book. Banks is just a fabulous imagination and while this was a great listen and was pretty well read, I will so much more miss him for his 'Feersum' SciFi. I am so glad he also loved his SciFi so much.
If either of us were religious - I would be saying - Bless you Banks!
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- Leonardo
- 26-06-13
Not the great Mr Banks' best
This is really not in the same league of many other Banks books, such as The Wasp Factory or The Crow Road to name but two. There is very little in the way of plot and I really took a dislike to most of the argumentative characters, the exception being Kit who is an interesting creation whom I think could have been used to much greater effect.
This is generally a very pedestrian read pulled up only by Peter Kenny's narration which keeps things moving, although there isn't a lot of movement to be had.
1 of 3 people found this review helpful
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- Sam
- 04-09-13
the last offering of a great author
A brilliant story, his last book that perhaps reflects some of his own thoughts, challenges and insights as he confronted mortality. And Peter Kenny reads extremely well, as he always does. After a few hundred audiobooks I can say that this combination of author and reader are my absolute favourite and I highly recommend them.