Books Read: Complicity
Apr. 6th, 2003 08:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aFinished reading Complicity
by Iain Banks this afternoon. It was, miraculously, a three-day novel. I started reading it just before bed Thursday night and finished it before I got out of my robe today (though admittedly it was the afternoon). I never allow myself that much time to read anymore, because there's too much to be done. A month is more like my average.
I'm not even sure why I picked Complicity up. I'd finished Revelation Space Thursday night and wasn't quite feeling like sleeping yet, nor was I up to doing anything particularly sensical, and so I grabbed a fairly random book off the shelves. It was a hardcover next to some paperbacks and some smaller trades, and thus it stood out a little bit. I think![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kimberly_a originally brought the book into this house, through her pre-merge collection.
I haven't read Banks in about five years, since I read the SF novel Consider Phlebas. I remember that one being dense and depressing, and that the ending was unsatisfying. It was enough to recommend against Banks for a long time.
Complicity is one of Banks' non-SF novels. It's a thriller, also a category that I usually don't read, about a journalist and serial killer (who may or may not be the same person). But, Banks is really writing about deeper issues. It's about personal responsibility and the things that we allow to be done--which is to say, complicity. It's about justice, and what that could mean to different people.
Like that one other Banks book I read, Complicity isn't necessarily a happy book, but then the world isn't a happy place. It is, however, honest. (And well written, characterized, plotted, and all the rest.)
I'm now more interesting in reading other Banks books from both sides of his literary career, and should really consider rereading Phlebas sometime too.
by Iain Banks this afternoon. It was, miraculously, a three-day novel. I started reading it just before bed Thursday night and finished it before I got out of my robe today (though admittedly it was the afternoon). I never allow myself that much time to read anymore, because there's too much to be done. A month is more like my average.
I'm not even sure why I picked Complicity up. I'd finished Revelation Space Thursday night and wasn't quite feeling like sleeping yet, nor was I up to doing anything particularly sensical, and so I grabbed a fairly random book off the shelves. It was a hardcover next to some paperbacks and some smaller trades, and thus it stood out a little bit. I think
kimberly_a originally brought the book into this house, through her pre-merge collection.I haven't read Banks in about five years, since I read the SF novel Consider Phlebas. I remember that one being dense and depressing, and that the ending was unsatisfying. It was enough to recommend against Banks for a long time.
Complicity is one of Banks' non-SF novels. It's a thriller, also a category that I usually don't read, about a journalist and serial killer (who may or may not be the same person). But, Banks is really writing about deeper issues. It's about personal responsibility and the things that we allow to be done--which is to say, complicity. It's about justice, and what that could mean to different people.
Like that one other Banks book I read, Complicity isn't necessarily a happy book, but then the world isn't a happy place. It is, however, honest. (And well written, characterized, plotted, and all the rest.)
I'm now more interesting in reading other Banks books from both sides of his literary career, and should really consider rereading Phlebas sometime too.