Rating: 
Summary: Was it a nightmare, or did I read it!
Review: Follow this hack as his days become ever more intriguing. A compelling, unravelling book. Has anyone bought the film rights? If you enjoy Banks and want another fix try the excellent "Whit".
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Summary: too good for words!`
Review: hey there, all i want to say is well done, Iain! I can't wait until it comes out at the cinema! XXX
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Summary: An excellently gripping book
Review: I am 16 and founf this book really intreging and well structured how the author goes from the past to the present so effectively.
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Summary: Gripping, Exciting, Complex - Masterpiece!
Review: I am also reading this book for my Higher Review of Personal Reading and it is undoubtably the best book I have read to date. It is gripping, has an amazing and truly original plot. Banks gets you very close to the characters and the suspece is amazing throuhout. I read it in one day!
Rating: 
Summary: Was it you? Was it me?
Review: I have just read Banks' novels A Song Of Stone and Complicity back-to-back. It hasn't been an especially pleasant experience; A Song of Stone is a pretentious, mean-spirited, violent, and not especially well-written book, and this one is mean-spirited and violent, and not especially well written either. At least it isn't pretentious. Here we have a reprobate, lefty Scottish hack who is unwittingly drawn into the police inquiry into a serial killer, when Inspector Knacker realises that the victims were all named in a single article written by the journalist a number of years previously. It's a frame up, Guv - or is it? Banks has a bob each way for about half the novel; cunningly (or tiresomely, depending on how you look at it) adopting the second person singular voice when recounting the grisly deeds of the murderer (and they are recounted in graphic detail: the squeamish should take the next exit and follow the signs back to Helen Fielding), but all the while else writing from Colley's first person perspective. So does Colley know the killer? Is it Colley himself? Is he an accomplice? Maybe he's schizophrenic! Surely, Iain Banks wouldn't stoop to such a level... And nor - I think - does he. The split narration a pretty neat device for creating suspense, but rather than stringing it out, Banks changes tack mid way through and reveals the killer's identity, at which point the second person singular narratives stop, and a pretty convoluted back-story emerges, involving, as is seemingly inevitable in Banks' fiction, unpleasant childhood flashbacks. This in turn gives perspective to the political/moral issues which gallivant throughout the book, but which are finally bludgeoned to death in a very poor denouement, in which Banks contrives to put his two main protagonists in a bunker on an island arguing intently about the rights and wrongs of the situation. Banks' writing, usually deft at handling this sort of situation, steers like a cow on this occasion. All is ultimately thrown into confusion again in the final couple of pages with the reintroduction of the second person narrative voice, previously only associated with the Killer. So was it Colley all along? Beats me. Hard on the heels of the obnoxious Pol Sci 101 lecture in from the bunker, I really didn't care. For all this, Complicity has had some (questionable) literary influence though: Irvine Welsh's protagonist DS Bruce Robertson in his genuinely dire novel, Filth, is heavily indebted to Cameron Colley - it's difficult to see Welsh devising a boozing, drug-doing, sex mad hypocritical Scotsman harbouring an internal parasite without having seen this first. Which makes Welsh's achievement all the more paltry. On the other hand, I think Banks owes a debt of gratitude to Thomas Harris - there is a distinctly Lecterish feel to the machinations of the Serial Killer. In summary, this is not as great a book as some would have you believe: Banks' style is refreshingly different at first, but when - as I just have - you read a couple of them back to back, the tricks in his magician's bag begin to reveal themselves.
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Summary: The best book I have ever read (possibly)
Review: I have read this book for my Review of Personal reading for my English higher, and although this is my second go at this, I wish that this was the book I used the first time round. I have now written the review and I may put it on here, but as any peice of writing I find that it can be difficult to write fluently due to the fact that most books do not capture you attention, but with Complicity, I wrote an essay of 1200 word in two hours, because the way a feel about this book. It let me flow out my opinions. This may not be the best review you have evr ready, but all I can say is, thankyou Iain Banks!
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Summary: Complicity
Review: i have recently finished reading Complicity for the second time and have, once again, very much enjoyed it. The book itself is filled with sexual deviation, drug abuse and deception - so is obviously going to be superb read! I was asked to write a report on it, and in my report i chose to focus on the extraordinary relationship between Andy, and the main charater Cameron Colle. Indeed, this relationship was frought, and in the end it is still to be decided weathe ror not it stood the test of time and prooved to be a good relationship or not. Without giving the ending or plot away too much, it is clear that the relationship was percieved to be something way short of indespensible by one party in the book, but it remains to be seen weather or not the other person felt the same.
all in all, an odd, but superb read. plenty of food for thought, that is for certain!
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Summary: Forget Use of Weapons, check out his use of Language!
Review: I know there are a ton of reviews above and below mine, so I won't make this too long...But everyone should read this book. I wouldnt say that about all my favorite books, I wouldn't reccomend Philip K. Dick to all of my friends, but this book I push on the literate world as a whole. As I said, Banks' use of language is incredible, and his tale is absolutely enthralling. In partciular, he uses First and second person in so wholly original a way, it's both simple and astounding. The only other book I've ever read that used Second person at all significantly was Jay McInerney's "Bright Lights, Big City", which was a great story, but Banks uses it so much more effectively, and with so much clearer an effect in mind, not as some literary experiment but as a way to both hide the antagonist's identity and personalize his acts and his mentality in a way third person narration would be hard pressed to do, especially alongside the Main characters first person. In ! addition, Banks is so insanely honest with our protagonist's personality, for good and bad, that we have one of the most real, most liefelike, and least one-dimensional protagonists in the history of literature. Like Shakespeare, this book is both a thrill to read and a true contribution to English Literature.
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Summary: Dark, shocking and magnificent
Review: I regard this as the best of all Banks' books bar Use of Weapons and The Bridge. This was the first novel of his that I read and it hooked me from the start. At times it's horrifying, not only in its depictions of the "Red Avenger's" brutal murders and assaults, but more sinisterly in the way the reader is encouraged to almost rejoice in these deaths - the men involved deserve it. Or do they? Banks does not entirely agree with his murderer's actions. It's one thing to fantasise but another to act out your fantasies. Alleviating the gloom and the horror, at least in the first half of the novel, is a demonic sense of humour, gleefully savaging Tories (only metaphorically here) in particular. Appropriately the humour dries up as the full implications of the murders and their effect on the protagonist are gradually revealed. The conclusion is a real sickener, offering no hope or redemption; a perfect denouement for a thoroughly disturbing, shocking and yet perversely entertaining novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Gloomy, depressing, violent, dreadful
Review: I wholly fail to understand what anyone finds to like in this book. It is occasionally gripping, but it is also depraved without being in the least bit incisive. If you are the type of person who symapathises with Charles Manson or Fred West, you might enjoy the violence, but if you have a shred of humanity in you, you will find the unremitting cruelty initially repuslive and ultimately boring. None of the characters are either believable or sympathetic, and the story rambled on for far too long. A total waste of time.
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