Matter (Culture series)
The intricate structure of a Shellworld – an artificial planet of spheres-within-spheres – is matched only by the machinations of its inhabitants.
On the eighth sphere of Sursamen, a man witnesses the murder of his father and flees, searching for the one – maybe two – people who could clear his name. For his brother, this means a life lived under constant threat of treachery, while for their sister, Djan Seriy Anaplian, it means returning to a place she’d thought abandoned forever.
Anaplian is not who she once was. She has become an agent of the Culture’s Special Circumstances section, charged with high-level interference in civilisations throughout the greater galaxy.
Concealing her new identity – and her particular set of abilities – might be a dangerous strategy. In the world to which she returns, nothing is quite as it seems; and determining the appropriate level of interference in someone else’s war is never a simple matter.