TEASER TUESDAY #10

Teaser Tuesday is an intriguing meme started by Miz B over at Books and a Beat.

All you have to do is:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

• Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

One of the books I intended to read this summer was the next in line for my exploration of Iain M. Banks’ Culture series: EXCESSION.  Considered by many a complex book, it intimidated me – sort of – but I finally decided to take the plunge: the first few pages were indeed a little puzzling, and made me flounder a bit, until I reached the point where a human character gives the readers the following peek into the alien society of the Affront. Faced with Iain Banks’ peculiar brand of humor, I finally felt at home, and knew I would enjoy this book just as much as I did the previous ones.

The mess space […] was hung with flags, banners, the hides of enemies, bits and pieces of weapons and military paraphernalia. The curved, veined-looking walls were similarly adorned with plaques, company battalion, division and regimental honor plaques and the heads, genitals, limbs or other acceptably distinctive body parts of old adversaries.   Genar-Hofoen had visited this particular nest space before on a few occasions. He looked up to see if the three ancient human heads which the hall sported were visible this evening; the Diplomatic Force prided itself on having the tact to order that the recognisable trophy bits of any given alien be covered over when a still animate example of that species paid a visit, but sometimes they forgot.