Used
Paperback
1998
$3.28
Iain M. Banks' previous science fiction novel, EXCESSION, was a SUNDAY TIMES hardback and paperback bestseller, and was published to enormous popular and critical acclaim. Without doubt one of the most daring, imaginative and compelling writers of his generation, his new science fiction novel will be a major event in the 1998 publishing calendar. In the winter palace, the King's new physician has more enemies than she at first realises. But then she also has more remedies to hand than those who wish her ill can know about. In another palace across the mountains, in the service of the regicidal Protector General, the chief bodyguard too has his enemies. He also has at least one person he cares for deeply and who cares for him, though neither can risk saying so. Spiralling round a central core of secrecy, deceit, love and betrayal, two stories - linked more closely than even those involved can know - climb to a devastating climax.
Used
Hardcover
2000
$3.28
Iain M. Banks, the international bestselling author of The Player of Games and Consider Phlebas, is a true original, a literary visionary whose brilliant speculative fiction has transported us into worlds of unbounded imagination. Now, in his acclaimed new novel, Banks presents an engrossing portrait of an alien world, and of two very different people bound by a startling and mysterious secret. On a backward world with six moons, an alert spy reports on the doings of one Dr. Vosill, who has mysteriously become the personal physician to the king despite being a foreigner and, even more unthinkably, a woman. Vosill has more enemies than she first realizes. But then she also has more remedies in hand than those who wish her ill can ever guess. Elsewhere, in another palace across the mountains, a man named DeWar serves as chief bodyguard to the Protector General of Tassasen, a profession he describes as the business of assassinating assassins. DeWar, too, has his enemies, but his foes strike more swiftly, and his means of combating them are more direct. No one trusts the doctor, and the bodyguard trusts no one, but is there a hidden commonality linking their disparate histories? Spiraling around a central core of mystery, deceit, love, and betrayal. Inversions is a dazzling work of science fiction from a versatile and imaginative author writing at the height of his remarkable powers.