Yes, definitely an odd title but then Iain M. Banks seems to enjoy them: Consider Phlebas, Excession, Feersum Endjinn, for instance. Nevertheless he brings an awesome creativity and inventiveness to the books themselves so let this foible slide.
The Algebraist is set a few thousand years in our future, thousands of light years away from Earth. Humans found their way to interstellar travel only to meet themselves and a vast array of other species. As Banks puts it, everywhere you can go someone already lives there, from the quantum foam to the vast spaces between the galaxies to the depths of gas giants.
Especially the last. The Dwellers are the oldest known surviving species, claiming to have evolved billions of years ago as the Milky Way itself was just forming and that certain individual Dwellers are themselves in the range of two billion years old. Certainly they inhabit most of the gas giant planets in our galaxy and in huge numbers on each of the massive planets though curiously not on Jupiter or Saturn. Each Dweller is also physically huge, living double wagonwheels 10 meters in diameter.
Our story, though, is set in the Ulubis system, a minor system off to the edge of things, but important because its one of the half dozen or so where the local Dwellers deign to interact with members of other species. Our lead character is Seer Fassin Taak; seers are academics who specialize in communicating with, and understanding, the often inscrutable ancients and Taak is relatively young but a leading member of one of the leading seer families.
Unbeknownst to him, an old text he recovered early in his career has a clue to a matching volume that may potentially galaxy-changing information, or it may be little more than Dweller humor. Either way it unleashed huge military forces intent on capturing the answer.
Taak is drafted into the military of the Mercatoria, the currrent ruling clique among most of the Milky Way (not, of course, including the Dwellers). A “barbarian” ruler of an empire spanning 100+ disconnected star systems, Luceferous (a human, which is a bit odd in Banks’ galaxy, who would put Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler to shame), is bearing down on Ulubris system with a huge battlefleet while relief from Mercatorian forces is unlikely to reach them in time to help.
Most of The Algebraist concerns Taak’s search for this missing information, much of it spent in the wonderland of Nasqueron, the gas giant world in Ulubris, traveling from contact to contact and, more engagingly for readers, allowing Banks to create amazing landscapes and characters. Remember, this isn’t in a simply-larger Earth-like planet but one where Earth would be swallowed without notice into the swirling, stormy gaseous atmosphere; the humans must remain encased in special single seat spaceships buffered by gel to deal with the immense pressure. Taak, indeed, remains in his ship for months through the last two-thirds or so, which is not that good for him as it gets more and more banged up.
Banks also is very clear that he’s writing a war story. The weapons and battle forces are laid out and the civilians about to die are shown, no punches pulled. He also has a fully developed array of alien species and their places in the galactic hierarchy, with humans nowhere near the top (except locally, where they’re the dominent populace aside from Dwellers).
And the results may–or may not–be what you expect but it surely is no slick Hollywood ending.
definitely recommended
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