Against a Dark Background
Chapters - Iain M. Banks
Prologue
A young mother and her daughter ride a cable car up a mountain at the ski resort of Frelle, accompanied by bodyguard Xellpher. Attackers open fire from a nearby cliff and a stopped cable car, killing Xellpher and fatally wounding the mother, who uses her last strength to push her child - the young Sharrow - out of the door to safety before a grenade detonates.
POV: Sharrow's Mother·On page: Sharrow, Xellpher·Mentioned: Kryf Dascen
Part 1: From a Glass Shore
Chapter 1: Overture
On the Issier shore Sharrow meets her cousin Count Geis in person; he rides up the beach on a bandamyion to plead with her one more time to come live at his estate while the Huhsz writs run their year, and she turns him down. After he is gone, the half-buried shape of a beachcomber turns out to be a disguise around a single bald, copper-skinned, gold-eyed young man - one of the Twin Emissaries' kind - who offers her his protection too. She refuses him, fires her hydrofoil up and runs back out across the bay.
POV: Sharrow·On page: The Twin Emissaries, Count Geis
Chapter 2: The Chain Gallery
Sharrow leaves her island home and lover Jyr, selling her share of a tropical fish business and travelling to the Sea House to visit her imprisoned half-sister Breyguhn. Breyguhn reveals that their grandfather Gorko encoded the location of the Universal Principles book into a servant's bloodline through genetic programming, and that a man named Bencil Dornay carries the secret - accessible only through an exchange of body fluids with someone of the Dascen female line.
POV: Sharrow·On page: Jyr, Breyguhn, Seigneur Jalistre·Mentioned: Miz Gattse Kuma, Cenuij Mu, Bencil Dornay
Chapter 3: Echo Street
Sharrow drives north to Regioner to reunite with Zefla Franck and her brother Dloan, who both eagerly agree to rejoin the team. She then travels to Lip City disguised as a scarred prostitute to locate Cenuij Mu, who is hostile due to lingering guilt over the Lip City disaster, but she stuns him and brings him to the city limits where she gives him the choice to come voluntarily or walk away - he chooses to think about it.
POV: Sharrow·On page: Zefla Franck, Dloan Franck, Cenuij Mu·Mentioned: Miz Gattse Kuma
Chapter 4: Log-Jam
The team flies to the Log-Jam, a vast floating city of joined ships, where Miz Gattse Kuma greets them with characteristic flamboyance and reveals his plan to steal the Crownstar Addendum, the city's most precious treasure. Miz introduces them to his inside man, Vice Invigilator Lebmellin, while news broadcasts show the Huhsz publicly defending their right to hunt Sharrow.
POV: Sharrow·On page: Miz Gattse Kuma, Zefla Franck, Dloan Franck, Ethce Lebmellin, The Chief Invigilator of the Log-Jam
Chapter 5: Lifting Party
Miz's underwater repair module breaches the vault of the battleship Devastator to steal the Crownstar Addendum, but Lebmellin double-crosses them - he has already swapped the real necklace and attempts to use a fake Mind Bomb to incapacitate the team. The SNB bond lets Sharrow, Miz and Dloan react in unison to overpower Lebmellin's men, but Lebmellin falls to his death and two identical bald young men trap Sharrow, torturing her with a voodoo-like doll linked to a crystal virus in her body, demanding she eventually give the Lazy Gun to their employers.
POV: Sharrow·On page: Miz Gattse Kuma, Dloan Franck, Zefla Franck, The Twin Emissaries, The Chief Invigilator of the Log-Jam
Chapter 6: Solo
Sharrow is captured by the Solipsists, a band of privateers led by Elson Roa, who believes he is God and everyone else is an apparition of his will. She negotiates her ransom at a modest sum and directs them to take her to Ais in Nasahapley, where Miz plans to intercept the Huhsz Hunting Passports as they travel by monorail from the World Shrine to Yadayeypon.
POV: Sharrow·On page: Elson Roa·Mentioned: Miz Gattse Kuma
Chapter 7: Operating Difficulties
The team ambushes the Huhsz monorail in the K'lel desert, engaging in a fierce firefight before Dloan rolls a flea-cluster grenade back into the Huhsz carriage and secures the five Hunting Passports. They dump the Passports down a radioactive waste silo and destroy the shaft, contaminating the documents and buying Sharrow precious time before the Huhsz can resume the hunt.
POV: Sharrow·On page: Miz Gattse Kuma, Dloan Franck, Zefla Franck, Cenuij Mu
Chapter 8: The Mortal Message
At Bencil Dornay's mountain house, Sharrow suffers another agonising attack from the crystal virus while swimming. A doctor confirms a crystal virus has grown throughout her brainstem - war-era technology implanted during her hospitalisation years ago. At Dornay's party, Sharrow exchanges saliva with him to trigger the blood-fealty code; he is seized by a compulsion to dance with her in an elaborate spiral pattern, then collapses dead from a brain haemorrhage, while Cenuij records the glyph their dance traced.
POV: Sharrow·On page: Miz Gattse Kuma, Zefla Franck, Dloan Franck, Cenuij Mu, Bencil Dornay, Doctor Clave·Mentioned: Breyguhn
Part 2: The Signals of Decay, The Weaponry of Deceit
Chapter 9: Reunions
Cenuij decodes Dornay's death-dance as a Cevese script glyph pointing to Miykenns Capital during the Ladyr dynasty - the Kingdom of Pharpech. Sharrow disguises herself as "Ysul Demri" with a shaved head and altered features, but the twin emissaries intercept her at Stager space station to remind her they are watching. She travels to Miykenns and reunites with the team in Malishu, the city built within the enormous alien plant called the Entraxrln.
POV: Sharrow·On page: Miz Gattse Kuma, Zefla Franck, Dloan Franck, Cenuij Mu, The Twin Emissaries
Chapter 10: Just a Concept
Sharrow and Zefla visit eccentric scholar Ivexton Travapeth, the system's foremost expert on Pharpech, hiring him as a consultant for a fake documentary as cover for their expedition. Interspersed flashback chapters show Sharrow and Miz's wartime romance beginning during a canal-boat ride through Streme Tunnel, and the team's drunken camaraderie at the Bistro Onomatopoeia - where a phone call from a military doctor informed Sharrow she was pregnant with Miz's child.
POV: Sharrow·On page: Zefla Franck, Miz Gattse Kuma, Dloan Franck, Cenuij Mu, Ivexton Travapeth, Seigneur Jalistre
Chapter 11: Deep County
The team travels deep into Miykenns's remote interior by train toward Pharpech, while Travapeth briefs them extensively with photographs and stories about the isolated kingdom. They prepare their plan: Cenuij will infiltrate the castle disguised as a monk from a God-hating order, presenting blank "Useless books" as gifts to win King Tard's favour, while the others pose as visiting traders in the town below.
POV: Sharrow·On page: Zefla Franck, Cenuij Mu, Miz Gattse Kuma, Dloan Franck, Leeskever
Chapter 12: Snow Fall
Holed up in a Deep County safe-house ahead of the move on Pharpech, Sharrow sits out a blizzard with Miz, Zefla and Dloan. The cold pulls her back through the wartime flashbacks that bind her to Miz - their old hideouts in the mountains, the loss of her squadron, her crash and capture at Nachtel's Ghost.
POV: Sharrow·On page: Miz Gattse Kuma, Cenuij Mu, Zefla Franck, Dloan Franck
Chapter 13: At the Court of the Useless Kings
Cenuij Mu, posing as a foreign scholar, secures an audience with King Tard and presents the blank books - the joke that lands them as "Useless books" sufficiently delights the King that he grants Cenuij the run of the kingdom. The rest of the team meanwhile establishes itself at an inn in Pharpech, working out their next moves while the team learns its way around the strange, deliberately backward little realm.
POV: Sharrow·On page: Cenuij Mu, King Tard XVII, Miz Gattse Kuma, Dloan Franck, Zefla Franck
Chapter 14: Vegetable Plot
The annual stom-tagging ceremony goes disastrously wrong when the team contaminate the King's gas canister with female stom secretions, driving the male stom into a frenzy that kills several guards. King Tard himself escapes the goring by scrambling up the rafters above the cavern banquet hall, where, boasting drunkenly down at his court, he loses his footing and falls to his death. The chapter closes with word reaching the team that the Huhsz have arrived in Pharpech.
POV: Sharrow·On page: Miz Gattse Kuma, Dloan Franck, Zefla Franck, Cenuij Mu, King Tard XVII
Chapter 15: Escape Clause
The team flees Pharpech on jemers with the Universal Principles, while Cenuij alerts the castle authorities that the arriving Huhsz are "God-worshipping republicans" to delay pursuit. Flashbacks show Sharrow attending a New Year party at cousin Geis's underground gallery, where he reveals a vast collection of treasures including family heirlooms and the tomb of their grandfather Gorko.
POV: Sharrow·On page: Miz Gattse Kuma, Dloan Franck, Zefla Franck, Cenuij Mu, Count Geis
Chapter 16: The Ghost
Sharrow travels alone to Nachtel's Ghost to deliver the Universal Principles to the twin emissaries at a ruined geothermal station. The twins casually confirm they represent an agency serving various clients - in this case the Sad Brothers - and accept the book before sending her to find the Lazy Gun, the real prize their employers want.
POV: Sharrow·On page: The Twin Emissaries