The novels of Iain M. Banks have forever changed the face of modern science fiction. His Culture books combine breathtaking imagination with exceptional storytelling, and have secured his reputation as one of the most extraordinary and influential writers in the genre.
'Banks is a phenomenon' William Gibson
It was one of the less glorious incidents of a long-ago war.
It led to atrocities on an extraordinary scale. To the destruction of two suns and the billions of lives they supported.
Now, eight hundred years later, the light from the first of those doomed stars has reached the Culture Orbital, Masaq', bathing its -fifty billion inhabitants in the rays of their society's ancient mistake.