I first discovered The Algebraist , by Iain M. Banks, several years ago on The Algebraist Audio CD and bought it immediately as the idea of adventure on others world, in the distant future, is right up my street. To be honest I could not really get into it so it was with surprise I discovered the printed version recently and finally found the courage to work through this novel.

The story follows the adventures of Seer Fassin Taak, in the year 4034 AD, who is sent on a secret mission, to the gas giant Nasqueron in the system Ulubis, to uncover a hidden secret that could stave off an impending invasion force – the Starveling Cult (who appear to have made a pact with the local Beyonders). Along the way Seer Taak interacts with a number of other life forms and faces many challenges in his quest to find, and understand, the information before it is too late.

The universe and landscape created in the Algebraist are great – you could imagine the type of atmosphere on a gas cloud and the lower depths where unknown surprises lie – and the main hero, Seer Fassin Taak, was well set up. The inhabitants of the gas cloud, the Dwellers who are a slow race (they move at a slower timeline than the rest of us Quick races), are well thought out too giving a feel of an age old race, like ray fish, whose only currency seems to be the exchange of kudos.

Early on the story jumped to a much earlier timeline, explaining a little history of Fassin Taak and his friends. This jump was made with no prior reference as to when it was or why (unless I missed it) which felt a little odd – although it was somewhat necessary to establish certain characters for them to be able to interact later in the story.

Much effort was setup early on describing the main bad guy, the Archimandrite Luseferous, a colourful villain with some interesting pastimes – but nothing was made of this character toward the end of the book and the bad guy seemed to just fizzle out – it almost feels like the writer ran out of steam towards the end of the story and in all honesty I was left a little deflated by the end of the story.

I could not wait to get through this book and not for the right reasons. The story was just about interesting enough but lacked some depth and felt very padded with paragraphs of descriptive text not really leading anywhere.

I wanted to like this story very much but it was hard work getting through, especially with some of the lavish descriptions of people and places. Some of the parts of the story also seemed just a little too convenient for my liking and, as a result, Seer Taak ended up simply drifting from scene to scene with no real purpose. At the end I was left wondering if he simply had not bothered with his quest in the first place whether anything would have really changed (in fact the Mercatoria would have many more ships left by avoiding the dumb encounter with the Dwellers).

Perhaps The Algebraist was written with a sequel in mind which would flesh out the universe, especially the Starveling Cult, a little more?

For some reason I was reminded very much of Babylon 5 when reading this book; the Dwellers feeling somewhat reminiscent of the Vorlon race and the Mercatoria, to me, felt a lot like the Centaurans with their pomp and circumstance filling proceedings. The story did not have a central space station which is where the similarity ends.