![]() ![]() Hence its status as a “secret Culture novel” is very much an open secret. Banks confirmed it, most reviewers don’t seem to regard it as a spoiler to mention its Culture links, and it’s always included in any list of Culture novels. The missing last bead had not, of course, simply fallen off in the confusion as he supposed it had been offensively deployed, presumably detonating inside the torturer’s head.Īlthough the book itself, including its cover and blurb, and the publisher’s descriptions, remains tacit about the wider context implied in Inversions, this fact is explicitly stated elsewhere. The “beads” mentioned by the servant are tiny bombs, disguised as decorative jewels. This is a clear reference to one of the Culture’s most distinctive pieces of technology, the “knife missile”: an autonomous, AI-controlled, self-propelled weapon in the shape of a dagger, carried by Culture agents in the field for protection. Afterwards, bemused, the servant notices that “ old battered dagger had lost the last of its little white beads round the top rim of its pommel”. In a few seconds, while his eyes are closed in terror, she mysteriously escapes from her bondage, while the torturer’s head is obliterated and his assistants are also violently killed. ![]() Narrated by her clueless servant, it recounts how she is tied up and about to be raped and tortured. The most dramatic evidence of Culture presence occurs in the climax to the female agent’s story. ![]()
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