Archives: Book Reviews

Iain Banks writes fiction that warps your perceptions of character. He shifts voice so effortlessly that you turn page after page, little realizing the novel is zipping by. I was immersed in this novel from beginning to end. It is a brilliant family saga of recent history. This is not a saga of past times, it is history of the Generation X. I’ve had enough of Baby Boomer angst. I want computer geek anxiety. This is after all the Age of Anxiety.
Dark family secrets, an illicit, obsessive love affair and a multi-million pound gaming business. The Wopuld family built their fortune on a game called Empire! – now a wildly successful computer game. So successful, the American Spraint Corp wants to buy the Wopulds out. Young renegade Alban, who has been evading the family tentacles for the last few years, thinks Spraint should be treated with suspicion – but he also has other things on his mind. What drove his mother to take her own life? And is he yet over Sophie, his bewitching cousin and teenage love, who’ll be present at the forthcoming family gathering at Garbadale, their highland castle?