We’ve been getting some great advance reviews for Iain M. Banks’ Matter. In this weekend’s Scotland on Sunday, Stuart Kelly says:

If I said this novel was a searing inquiry into justified warfare and the dangers of imposing your ideas of civilisation, told at a rattling pace with breathtaking set pieces and oodles of wit and charm, I’d hope that you’d continue reading and decide, in a few hundred words’ time, to buy the book…

…It’s exhilarating to see what he can do when he goes full-throttle into the form: to my mind, he’s simply the finest and most consistently challenging writer in that genre.

And over at SFFWorld, Mark Yon is saying:

As with any of Iain’s books to date, in Matter he deals with the material with wit and intelligence, as well as his trademark complexity and violence. It does manage to mix genres with aplomb, and there are some pleasingly jarring cultural moments when aliens intermix…I suspect that, despite its release early in the year, this one will be high on many best-of lists by the end of 2008.

We couldn’t agree more! You can read an excerpt of Matter here.