Hah, I hadn't thought of Feersum Endjinn as Scottish, but you might be right. I've lived in both Edinburgh and Glasgow (although quietly, as an Englishman) so p

Hah, I hadn't thought of Feersum Endjinn as Scottish, but you might be right. I've lived in both Edinburgh and Glasgow (although quietly, as an Englishman) so perhaps that made it easier for me, at least. What I liked about Banks' sci-fi is that he generally avoided too much 'info dumping' that some authors suffer from. Like "He was a X'nar'kk from the Blagh'le system ..." for like 3 paragraphs before you get to some actual plot. The only time I saw that a bit was in the Algebraist - funnily enough - in the subplot with Luseferous (diamond teeth, enemy head punching bag). Of course the parts with the Dwellers made up for that ('I do hope you have enough people.'). I guess it comes down to whether all the detail is enjoyable or not. When it's a long description of how a Ship converts the majority of its mass into a swarm of weapon platforms or the rapid sequence of events in a battle between drones over the space of a millisecond then it can be good. If someone was not into that, I guess the extra detail is going to make it worse for them.