How long does it take to read Surface Detail?
Surface Detail by Iain Banks takes about 11 hours 37 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
Book 9 of Culture series
Previous: Matter Next: The Hydrogen Sonata
About 11 hours 37 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 2010. 634 pages, about 174,350 words.
24 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 19 hours 22 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 11 hours 37 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 7 hours 16 minutes |
The page count is the median across 10 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
It begins in the realm of the Real, where matter still matters. It begins with a murder. And it will not end until the Culture has gone to war with death itself. Lededje Y'breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release, when it comes, is at a price, and to put things right she will need the help of the Culture. Benevolent, enlightened and almost infinitely resourceful though it may be, the Culture can only do so much for any individual. With the assistance of one of its most powerful - and arguably deranged - warships, Lededje finds herself heading into a combat zone not even sure which side the Culture is really on. A war - brutal, far-reaching - is already raging within the digital realms that store the souls of the dead, and it's about to erupt into reality. It started in the realm of the Real and that is where it will end. It will touch countless lives and affect entire civilizations, but at the center of it all is a young woman whose need for revenge masks another motive altogether. SURFACE DETAIL is Iain M. Banks' new Culture novel, a breathtaking achievement from a writer whose body of work is without parallel in the modern history of science fiction.
Subjects: Fiction, Revenge, Artificial intelligence, Life on other planets, Science fiction
