MYSTERY

The Hydrogen Sonata

by Iain M. Banks
. October 2012. 528p. 978-0-31621-237-3. 25.99.
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Banks’s latest Culture novel (after Surface Detail and Matter) is about the search for a 9800-year-old man. The hunter is a young musician who lives in ­Girdlecity, a sculpted city that wraps around an entire planet. She’s added a second pair of arms to her body to play that famously difficult instrument, the elevenstring. Her people are preparing to Sublime—to leave this universe and translate en masse to another, body-free plane of existence. Their holy book urges them to do this. The book always proved true in the past, but what if it is a hoax, foisted on them eons ago by alien tricksters? The 9800-year-old man may know the answer, but first she has to find him.
VERDICT Banks’s novels set in the alt-universe of the Culture are richly peopled with sentient beings, from energy people to ship Minds to all kinds of humanoids, insectoids, and what have you. No matter how exotic a detail, as Banks describes it, it’s credible. And his stories grab your attention. Of interest not only to sf fans but also to lovers of good prose and plotting. [See Prepub Alert, 6/13/12; the author also writes noir fiction as Iain Banks.—Ed.]
Reviewed by Sue White , Oct 15, 2012
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