A SONG OF STONE: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Disturbing....
Review: I haven't read any of Iain Banks' novels before I picked up "A Song of Stone" so I can't honestly say if it is his usual standard or if it's better or worse than his other works. Reading some of the other reviews on here, however, I do agree that he has a gift of making people feel uncomfortable. Abel's reflections on violence and incest was troubling to say the least. I thought the story slow-moving and felt like I was going around in the same circle the whole time, but perhaps that was Banks' intention to create a dismal atmosphere where one's trapped, and there's no escape except through death (for us, thankfully, the completion of the novel would suffice!) The underlying sexual tension with the female lieutenant was interestingly dealt with, however, and that was probably the only part of the novel where there was visible progress. I should need to read more of Banks' work to decide if I like him or not....if I have the desire to sink into depression again.....

Rating:
Summary: Depressing but great!
Review: I love Iain Banks' works. However, this time he may have gone too far on the level of depression and depravity the book reaches?

Or maybe that is indeed what makes this book another great one from this author - he shows us the horrors of an "ex-Yugoslavian-type" warzone without filters.

Read this book, but don't expect to be in a happy mood afterwards!

Rating:
Summary: Not a stroll in the park, but...
Review: I nearly gave up on this book six months ago. It was a tough read, and it took me a month of stops and starts to finish. Most of Banks' works are such a delight; this one is not. The story does not move well and the trappings of sex and violence are seemingly gratuitous. The writing is -- as usual for Banks -- nearly flawless and beyond reproach, but the ending is... well, not terribly satisfying. Now it is six months later, and I cannot forget the imagery. The work makes for a powerful commentary on human weakness. By weakness, I mean not our frailties, but our failings. Each of the book's characters is flawed, but I suspect that they are more real that way. I find myself just a bit changed from reading the book, and that is quite to the credit of Banks in my eyes. I think he aimed for a difficult and diffuse target with _Song of Stone_; maybe he missed by a bit, but the result was a book worth my time.

Rating:
Summary: Bleak
Review: I'm a Banks Fan. I've read most everything he's ever published -- but many many people warned me about this book, saying it was no good.

I recieved it as a birthday present yesterday, and read it in a few hours, which should give some indication of how quick a read it is. Whilst reading it I felt starved for information and yet inundated with trivia; Banks certainly uses a lot more words than the average author, and his flowery verbiage waffled on in many places, in many instances without getting across a definitive point of view.

The story is brutal from the start, and goes downhill, with no light at the end of the tunnel, no hinted at salvation down the road (so to speak).

As a fan, I find it difficult to say '1 star, Mr Banks', but I have to; this story had quite a few scenes from some of his other books, reworked whilst not being made 'new'. Bank's ability to shock is definitely there, if you liked the casual violence of The Wasp Factory, then this book might appeal.

Having finished the book, I set out to see what other reviewers had said, most of them covered the bases. It is a harsh tale, with no softened blows, very little redemption, and ultimately as pointless as the unexplained background war.

Rating:
Summary: Fair story, laboured and unnecessarily complex language
Review: I'm a great fan normally, and it's true that the story here is interesting and involving, if not as comprehensive as others he has written. But the language! It reads as if he has swallowed a grammar and some sort of "how to write a classic in one go" instruction manual. I lost all sense of spontaneity, it was murdered by the complexities of the verbal games he played. NOT his best work, by far.

Rating:
Summary: An Interesting Read
Review: I've read all of Iain Bank's books (without the M.) and this is probably one of the most ultimately bleak and disturbing (on a par perhaps with some aspects of The Bridge and The Wasp Factory). That said, an intelligent read, but the language is somehwat laboured, and he doesn't manage to work with first person as well as he has managed with mixing prose POV in previous novels.

Rating:
Summary: Well written but unrelentingly dark
Review: Iain Banks' novels are generally not full of bright happy sunshine and singing children (Consider Phelbas has to be the most depressing SF novel I've ever read) but even in the darkest stories there are islands of humors, snatches of dialogue that make you laugh out loud or absurdist situations that can't fail to bring a chuckle to your face. This novel has none of those things. It's just grimness personified, with the tone set right at the beginning and only going downhill from there. It takes place in some unspecified country at an unspecified time during a war for an unspecified cause. Two young lovers, a lord and lady of a castle, try to escape the country. Not too far out, they are captured by a band of soldiers led by a nameless lieutenant, who makes them go back to the castle. The jacket of the book makes it seem more plot centered than it actually is, from that point the book is nearly episodic in nature, with more examples of war and desolation and human darkness, finally ending really in the only way it can. There is absolutely nothing uplifting in this book, even the narrator (the young lord) is decadent and selfish and self-absorbed, and nobody else makes out much better. But for all the bad stuff going on in here, nothing is truly shocking, especially if you've read his other books . . . there are hints of weird relationships, acts of human brutality that in these days of access to world-wide news should be nothing surprising (the most brutal thing I saw was towards the end and involved a mill, frankly, I thought it was well done, really) . . . fortunately that's not really the point, at least as far as I can tell. What works the best here is Banks' writing, which is more fluid and poetic than of us books so far, rich in description and metaphor, yet it rarely becomes bogged down and wordy. It's a different style than he's used so far and it works brilliantly, giving the novel a dense and almost clastrophobic sense to it. In the end, though I'm not sure what you're left with . . . events escalate and go downhill, bad stuff happens and it all comes to a conclusion that you may or may not agree with. I didn't think it was bad as many others on the board, it was highly readable and once you get used to the dark tone it's really not that big a deal, and the prose is beyond excellent. However it shouldn't be anyone's first Banks book, or you're going to think he's this depressing writer out to shock people. I'm pretty sure there's a deeper message to this book somewhere but at some point it gets lost. So what you're left with is a well written very realistic novel that definitely won't give you a warm and fuzzy feeling when you're done. If you can stomach that (even the violence isn't that graphic) then you shouldn't have any problems. But he's done better, for sure. But you can't hit them all out of the park. Better luck next time.

Rating:
Summary: Iain's worst by far, I think...
Review: Iain went too far with this book. If you read this, it's good at first (especially with the Lt.'s introduction killing Half-Caste) but when you keep going it gets horribly one-toned.

Too many scenes are ruined by its consistently bleak nature. Abel always seems to be the underdog; the loser. When he gets his moment, he ruins it again and the story gets worse and worse. Way too much angst and way too much extremities simply adds up to a bad novel.

It's too bad really, because it makes an excellent first impression. However, it has too many flaws as a novel so overall I wouldn't reccomend it to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting novel.
Review: Interesting novel. It has distinct style which could be viewed as either eloquent or wordy. Personally I lean towards the latter.

Rating:
Summary: It is bleak. Really bleak.
Review: It seems that with every novel Mr.Banks produces, his stories become less and less acessible. A large, large part of "A Song of Stone" is left up to interpretation. This is not at all a bad thing, but it does mean that you'll want to read the book with someone, preferably aloud, so that the two of you can argue out the exact relationship of the main characters, debate the meaningfullness (or lack thereof) of their names, decide where exactly the story is set and then try to agree on the importance of some symbols and the intentional lack of meaning inherent in others.

The story itself is terribly self-absorbed and very much, in this manner, unlike anything else of Banks' that I've read. The narrator is a relic of old money and landed gentry slowly being divested of his belongings, home, history and happily snug little world. As it all shreds away, he becomes quite the dislikable character wallowing in his self-pity, pain and disenchantment, but his deconstruction is instructive. Banks demonstrates that nobly sallying forth with a stiff upper lip and the mantle of your history wrapped about your shoulders just doesn't work anymore. This point more than anything else is what defines the book as bleak. The violence, death and incest occur with the same languid remove and jaded inevitability as if the events were unfolding on TV. None of it is particularly horrifying, and that's the most horrifying aspect. Not many stories have morals anymore, and this one certainly doesn't. In fact, I was rooting for the deaths of certain characters by the end, and I do believe that this was the point Mr. Banks was trying to make.