an early novel by Iain Banks

short plot description: we follow three seemingly unrelated stories. Graham Park is head-over-heels in love but the object of his affections keeps him at arms length. Steven Grout is suffering from paranoid delusions and thinks he is an alien participant of a galactic war exiled to and kept on Earth by "Them". Quiss and Ajayi were on opposing sides in the "Therapeutic Wars" but are exiled to a castle for doing something wrong. They can only escape when they find the correct answer to a riddle but to actually get to answer the riddle they are forced to play unknown games with unknown rules.

my thoughts: not his best work, neither in the fiction nor the SciFi field. The characters feel only half-formed, as do the ideas expressed in the plot. Some plot turns are almost painfully obvious from the start, some parts didn't make sense do me though this was my second reading of the book.
The most interesting part for me was the Castle were Quiss and Ajayi are imprisoned, a wonderful and intriguing place.
The ending of the book is open to interpretation (I came up with three so far) but I'm not sure if that was Banks intent...

my advice: if you are new to Banks put this back in the shelf, he has written better books. This is more interesting from historical point of view, to see how Banks developed over the years.