The novel “The Algebraist” by Iain M. Banks was published for the first time in 2004.

Fassin Taak is a Slow Seer, a scholar who works in the Ulubis star system, which was cut off from the rest of the Mercatoria, a meta-civilization widespread in the Milky Way, after the wormhole connecting the Ulubis system to other stars was destroyed.

Fassin Taak’s task is to study the culture of the Dwellers, the inhabitants of Nasqueron, a gas giant planet in the Ulubis system. These beings are part of an ancient civilization that inhabits gas giant planets and is said to hide many secrets. Taak is enlisted into an organization that’s partly a military intelligence service and partly a religious order to discover one of those secrets, perhaps the only hope to save the inhabitants of the Ulubis system from the invasion of an interstellar fleet.

Most science fiction novels written by Ian M. Banks are part of the Culture series, instead “The Algebraist” is set in a different fictional universe. About 2,000 years in the future, humanity has spread throughout the galaxy along with many other sentient species. Artificial intelligences aren’t included as almost all of them were eliminated some thousands years earlier in a war and the survivors are hunted mercilessly.

The most important aliens are the Dwellers, the species that lives in the gas giant planets and it’s not accidental that the cover for the British edition is based on a picture of Jupiter and its satellite Io taken by the Cassini space probe. The Dwellers civilization is very ancient and is independent from the commonwealth known as the Mercatoria. They experience time more slowly than species such as the humans and usually aren’t concerned with what happens to the species that experience time more quickly. On the contrary, they attract scholars such as the protagonist Fassin Taak, who try to gather information about their culture facing a number of difficulties.

The Dwellers are the best idea in “The Algebraist” because they’re really different from humans. Physically, they look like giant yo-yos with a number of appendices but also mentally they’re really alien. Their society is in some ways an alien version of Iain M. Banks’s Culture: it’s almost anarchic and individually they have a way of thinking often difficult to understand for humans and for this reason they find it difficult to study them.

The Dwellers welcome some scholars among them, with criteria that apparenty are arbitrary, but hide many secrets. Some species tried to take them by force but they learned to their expense that they can appear not very serious but they’re well capable of fighting and can go on for thousands of years with no problem.

Iain M. Banks offers us so many elements about the Dwellers and the enormous amount of detail is at the same time one of the strengths and weaknesses of “The Algebraist”. This novel is very complex because it tells an articulated story with various subplots, many characters and even the language is complicated, often using long sentences.

The story begins just before the start of a war in which an interstellar fleet tries to invade the Ulubis system. Fassin Taak is charged with the mission of discovering one of the secrets of the Dwellers to save his planet, whose defenses can’t repel the attack.

The novel is developed in various subplots that tell Fassin Taak’s attempt to accomplish his mission, the invasion of the Ulubis system but also other secondary ones connected to some characters’ past. Iain M. Banks tells various stories of some of the protagonists but sometimes they’re unnecessary and add extra weight to the narrative.

The plot, as well as being fragmented, is complicated by the fact that the characters have to handle themselves among a lot of mysteries and intrigue. Iain M. Banks slowly reveals details important to understand something more about each of them. For this reason, “The Algebraist” reserve many surprises and twists.

The amount of details on the characters and the societies of the narrative universe “The Algebraist” is set in is truly amazing and every excuse seems good for further explanations and digressions. All this is topped off with several moments of humor, often dark. This sort of hitchhiker’s guide to the gas giants thus becomes at the same time stimulating but also heavy to read.

Iain M. Banks stated that he could write a trilogy but for the moment “The Algebraist” would remain a single novel. The author could have easily cut a hundred pages of assorted details to be included in later novels but unfortunately he decided to put them all in this one and at least for now there are no sequels.

Using an extreme concept, I could say that “The Algebraist” is an extraordinary book but a mediocre novel. That’s because it’s extremely rich but that’s also why it’s very fragmented so some elements and some characters end up being buried under that avalance of details. For example, the Archimandrite Luseferous could be a memorable villain but after being introduced at the beginning of the novel is forgotten until the second half.

Fans of Ian M. Banks, who got used to the complexity of his novels, will surely like “The Algebraist”. If you don’t know this author well, beware that reading this novel requires a considerable effort and I understand that not everyone is interested although I think it’s worth it.