Feersum Endjinn by Iain M. Banks

Sally Ann Melia

Sally Ann Melia

Sally Ann Melia, SF&F
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Apr 18, 2013
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S A Melia is an English SF&F writer based in Surre
I have read all of Iain M Banks books, and I read Feersum Endjinn the year after it was first published in 1994. This is probably the only Science Fiction book of Iain M Banks that I had read problems finishing.

This is a future earth story, and part of the issue I have with this book was that the main character: Bascule the Teller writes a large part of the story phonetically, and is really quite difficult to get used to. What actually happens is your reading pattern is disrupted, and instead of focusing on the story and the character's dilemma, you end up deciphering the text like hieroglyphs.

To give you an idea, the fourth chapter starts:

Woak up. Got dresd. Had brekfast. Spoke wif Ergates thi ant who sed itz juss been wurk wurk wurk 4 u lately master Bascule, Y dont u ½ a holiday? & I agreed & that woz how we decided we otter go 2 c Mr Zoliparia in thi I-ball ov thi gargoyle Rosbrith.

The book was well received and won a BSFA award in 1994, however I have only read it once and with great difficulty.

Not one I normally recommend, but for completeness sake, one has to read it.
 
Yeah, I struggled with the phonetic style and didn't finish this.
 
On occasion, particularly at the beginning, I actually had to read odd words and phrases of Bascule's entries out loud in order to understand them, and although by the end I was proficient enough, I didn't think the apparent justification for the phonetic-type spelling was enough to warrant the extra effort involved in reading it, and it just seemed to be a gimmick to set the book apart.

I also found myself getting frustrated at the multiple POVs with no indication of how they all linked together, which didn't start to mesh until about half-way through, and even then far too many things weren't explained or made clear so at the end I was still confused about some aspects of the whole thing. And the coincidences and too-easy resolved ending I found very disappointing, though I loved the last line.

I was wondering whether it's one of those books that needs to be read at least twice in order to appreciate it fully.
 
I agree it took a while to get the hang of his phonetic writing but I found that so long as I didn't stop to think too much it mostly came out pretty easily. I did love this book myself but I can fully appreciate why there are so many that, shall we say, didn't love it quite so much.
 
You should try The Book of Dave. Now that has annoying phoneticy/syntaxy eugh. Nope. Only book I have never finished! I have this one on my to be read pile though and from that snippet looks like I'll be having fun. I love phonetics :p
 
Stopped noticing the phonetic bits after the first few pages, except as an interesting accent on the narative. But then I really like Molesworth.

I think this is one of my favourite Banks. Have read it several times.
 
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