Excession
Culture Series, Book 5
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Excession
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Narrated by:
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Peter Kenny
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Written by:
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Iain M. Banks
About this listen
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.
Two and a half millennia ago in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe, the artifact appeared.
It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared.
Now it is back.
Diplomat Genar-Hofoen of Special Circumstances is sent to investigate but, sidetracked by an old flame and the spoiled-brat operative Ulver Seich, and faced with the systematic depravities of a race who call themselves the Affront, it's anyone's guess whether he'll succeed . . .
The Culture series:
Consider Phlebas
The Player of Games
Use of Weapons
Excession
Inversions
Look to Windward
Matter
Surface Detail
The Hydrogen Sonata
The State of the Art
Other books by Iain M. Banks:
Against a Dark Background
Feersum Endjinn
The Algebraist
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What the critics say
"Gripping, touching and funny." (TLS)
"A dizzying adventure." (Daily Mail)
"Explosive but tender." (Sunday Times)
What listeners say about Excession
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Kindle Customer
- 2023-03-24
Amazing story and performance
Peter Kenney does a great job of delivering Banks' Culture books, though I have never read them before. I feel like he delivers the narrative in a way that brings the world to life, I could live without some of his higher pitch drone voices, but it does do well to differentiate characters.
As for the story, I do not think I will ever be able to approach sci-fi the same again after listening to the Culture series. Even on the most basic of concepts, Banks delivers not only what one might expect but far more, and more often than not in such an imaginative way.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Michael Palmer
- 2018-09-19
Great fun.
Less cerebral than some of his other works but also funnier. The Culture is a paradise but humans (and machine minds) easily tilt towards militarism when the unknown presents itself in the form of an « Excession ». The grand overall scale mixed with personal viewpoints render the whole experience very entertaining and interesting. Highly recommended. The Narrator does a very good job.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Reader
- 2020-09-28
Great.
Peter Kenny’s narration makes all the Bank’s novels so engaging and so much fun. I love all his work. He’s so animated
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Brendan
- 2021-09-25
Exactly what I was looking for
Made my road trip far more endurable, basically only stopped listening to sleep. I really liked how it expanded on the culture world building, but also it would be a fine book in the series to start with.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Shesophist
- 2019-07-16
Fun Culture Tale, Great Narration
Peter Kenny is a great narrator and really brings the Culture to life.
This was a fun story, which involved so many more Culture ships, Minds, and their interactions compared to previous entries. You get a much better picture of what the Culture is, and how unimportant humans are, although they still can be.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 2021-12-31
The narrator Peter Kenny is terrible
This is not reading, it is overacting, and terribly bad. Hard to understand the words with all the accents and misplaced theatrical diction.
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