The Algebraist

I started reading Banks’ books on a recommendation from a teammate at Google, and so far have loved the books in his Culture series. Those books are a bit of a mixed bag in story arcs with varying narrative complexity and tonal shifts, but they all share the Culture universe, which is one of the best far-future sci-fi projections I’ve read.

In The Algebraist, most of the far-future galaxy is ruled by a brutal empire, which has banned AI - leading to a very different setting from the Culture series. A human scholar searches for ancient wormhole secrets hidden by enigmatic aliens (Dwellers), while war looms and the knowledge could change everything.

The main plot of the book is interesting, and has lots of room for twists, but I found the world-building slow and at times even tiring. The ending of the main plot nicely brings closure to the main arc, but I’d rate this low on the list of Banks’ works.