Complicity

Rating:
Summary: it kicks A**!
Review: The story line and characters are so engrossing. Iain banks captures each character so much so that you can not put the book down till you find out just who it is that is after Cameron Colley- the main character. There are so many twists in the plot,that if you should be stupid enough to stop reading the book half way through you may have to start again to find out who, why or what!! Read this book!

Rating:
Summary: Savage, funny, a wild ride. Very strange crime thriller.
Review: This is a fun yet thought-provoking read by the incomparable Iain Banks. It may not quite be Banks' best book -- his science fiction stuff is really, really good -- but it's got his best character, obnoxious but fascinating journalist Cameron Colley. Cameron is not someone you'd want to share living space with, but by God he's real, he's interesting, and he when he's scared, snotty, lustful, hot after a story, or backed into a deadly corner, you are right there with him for the ride. Lot's of great one-liners and memorable use of language, too. I nicked a point off for a predicatable antagonist and a slight heavy-handedness on the Moral Issue, but this book is still five times better than your average mass-market crime thriller. Check it out

Rating:
Summary: I Declare The Kite is Flying
Review: This is a modern masterpiece and not just because Banks talks about the "highly controversial" topic of masturbation and graphic sex, but because it's so blinkin' good; approaches issues and points in a manner so as they're not in there for the sake of it. He actually wants them in there. His pen leaks them, rather than scrawls them dispassionately. Or his keyboard, as the case may well be.

Which brings to another point: never before has the geekdom of video-games (i.e. Despot) been so brilliantly juxtaposed with a hip personality (Colley is undoubtedly hip, oh yes). It's mindblowing how he managed to pull it off and those flashbacks of his childhood: incredible.

It should be in every bedside table in every hotel across the globe. Forget the Bible. It's old hat. Enter ... dum dum dum ..... COMPLICITY.

Rating:
Summary: A Reminder of the Darker side of Western Culture
Review: This is a presentation of an alternative moral viewpoint but wrapped up as a murder-mystery. As a murder mystery it's entertaining though not brilliant. As a pointer to alternative views of our Western society it is thought provoking.

It's not a novel for people with weak stomachs. The murders are gruesome, a characteristic of Banks writing, though the violence is not gratuitous; it's there for a reason. Nor is it for those who suffer nightmares easily. It is certainly not for those who accept what authority, be it legal, religious or moral, tells us to think.

It is a novel for those who are prepared to think what mainstream society believes unthinkable. It's a novel that provokes thought about the inequitable, brutal, and irrational culture that Western society has become. For those with an open, enquiring and above all a suspicious mind this will add fuel to any distrust of authority.

Don't expect to be uplifted, this is as dark as it gets, but then that's how the world is turning out. Read it and think..... while you're still allowed to.


Rating:
Summary: Good fun mystery story.
Review: This is one of Banks's non-science-fiction books. (thus no middle initial) It's a murder mystery starring an investigative reporter. The reporter starts out with an anonymous tipster leading him into a government scandal, and ends up the center of a murder investigation. There are twists, turns, and the wonderfully erratic/eccentric characters that Banks likes to use with the skill that he uses them, and it's a good read. Not my favorite work of his, but I'm biased -- I like the SF stuff better. It's older too -- 1993 first pub, available here (here=US) only since 2002. Good, fun, entertaining, engaging stuff. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review: This is possibly my favourite Banks book. Some people may think the violence gratuitous and if that sort of thing offends you then avoid this book! But I don't think most people would find anything offensive here and personally I found the violence quite entertaining. The plotline to this book is criticised by some here for being too obvious. This may or may not be the case, but there is always more that plot to enjoy in a Banks novel. For instance, The Crow Road's plot is drawn out across the whole, long book and at times it appears there isn't one at all, but the book is still totally absorbing. Banks's writing is engaging, witty and young and it is a breath of fresh air to read.

Rating:
Summary: diabolical
Review: This was without doubt the worst, and most disgustingly offensive piece of trash i have ever laid my eyes upon. I would like to start a petition to have this book burnt alongside furbies and john cusack. Anyone with me?

Rating:
Summary: Mixed feelings
Review: While on the whole I liked COMPLICITY, there were plenty of times during the reading of it when I felt that things just didn't gel right. Plot elements -- crucial ones -- were introduced too late or in a slipshod way. The story felt haphazard and sometimes stumbled over itself. We spent a little too much time getting to know about the main character's -- a slacker Scottish newspaper writer named Cameron -- penchant for speed and video games and too little time moving ahead with the meat of the story. But as a horror novel, COMPLICITY does, in the end, come through. Its underlying theme of helplessness in the face of utter human greed and immorality, and how to respond to that effectively, plus the grotesque but imaginative murder scenes, draw us in and make us at least a little sympathetic toward the killer when the identity is revealed midway through. And the ending is oddly satisfying, if full of question marks.