INVERSIONS was published in 1998
It is a Culture novel
Some years ago, rocks and fire fell from the sky and the old Empire fell with them. In the lands released from that crushing hegemony, a new world order is about to emerge. Two people in particular can see all this in a wider context.
In the winter palace, the King’s new physician has more enemies than she at first realises. But then she also has more remedies to hand than those who wish her ill can know about.
In another palace across the mountains, in the service of the regicidal Protector General, the chief bodyguard, too, has his enemies. But his enemies strike more swiftly, and his means of combating them are more traditional.
American cover
Iain said, “With Inversions, I wanted to go back to something on a more human scale than Excession, and I wanted to give an answer to a question no-one’s ever asked: what does the Culture actually do to other societies – how do they intervene successfully? It comes down to ensuring that useful people survive and problematical ones ‘disappear.’ That it’s a Culture novel is just a little extra.
“It’s what I feel like writing and what I feel I’d like to read. I thought that it was, in some ways, a fairly straightforward book, in spite of the fact that it has two intertwined but never quite meeting stories. I’d have thought Use of Weapons was far more challenging in the way it’s put together than this one.”
“I suppose in some ways, Inversions is a reaction against Excession – it’s low tech and very much about people. Inversions and A Song of Stone do seem quite close in some ways. I think there is a commonality of mood, of feeling perhaps.
“In the end, Inversions is really a stunningly heavily disguised Culture novel. That’s what it boils down to. But I did insist that wasn’t put on the cover, because it’s not really a Culture novel, it doesn’t have the big spaceships. One way of looking at the book is as an answer to a question that no-one’s actually bothered to ask me yet: how does the Culture affect lesser societies? How does it interfere with them? And this book is the answer to those questions.”