A desolate landscape where armed gangs roam, unhindered by any remnant of law and order; roads choked by columns of miserable, tattered refugees; no, it's not the Balkans, but - in the endlessly fertile imagination of Iain Banks - an unrecognisably scarred Scotland in some indeterminate future. The story opens with the owners of a castle attempting to flee their property. They are captured by the lieutenant of an outlaw band, a ruthless woman who turns the hapless - and, it transpires, incestuous - pair into prisoners in their own keep, making up the rules as she goes along in a bizarre game of desire, deception and, ultimately, death. If it all sounds less than thrilling, that's the fault of this reviewer, because A Song of Stone is a novel of startling originality and disturbing lyricism. Banks writes like a dream, or maybe a nightmare, from the opening paragraphs - an evocation of winter powerful enough to chill the innocent reader to the bone - to the surreal and cruel ending.
By Arminta Wallace