The State of the Art by Iain M Banks

1. This book is split in two: some short stories and the titular novella. The stories are a big departure from the Culture novels for Banks, and not in a good way. They attempt to be philosophical think-pieces, but end up being straw-man arguments ruthlessly taken apart. I even agree with some of his arguments, but the setup and resolution often comes off bitter and angry. And these may be things to be angry about, but the bitterness really drags them down. They’re bad short stories, one-sided, and I wonder who the intended audience is. Those who agree with him will find nothing new, and those who disagree will be turned off by how uncharitable he is in ranting against the lack of charity in others. They’re too short to really set up characters, so they set up archetypes and then take them apart. The one above-average one deals with a sentient space-suit and its occupant trekking across a planet after a crash and trying to reach civilization. This is one of the longer short stories and allows characters to develop. That’s part of what makes this one so good. But it also doesn’t feel like a bitter rant against something Banks hates, which really helps. I look forward to rereading this one, but none of the other short stories.

2. The novella, on the other hand, is alright. It’s not a fantastic Culture yarn, though the story is fine. In it, the Culture discovers Earth in the 1970s and spends some time there trying to decide if they should establish contact or not. They ultimately decide that Earth is, at this point, too hopeless to help and, to protect themselves from Earth’s idiocy—murder, toil, capital, sexual violence, genocide, war—they pull back and use Earth as a sort of experimental control, a test-bed for other potential contacts. And this is where the vitriol of the short stories infects this hundred page novella: Earth’s negatives are played up and the positives are spoken only from the lips of two lunatics, a man who chooses to stay, and a cannibal. These two characters set up the central conflict within the novella: should the “good ship Arbitrary” contact and change Earth to be more like the Culture, should the Culture become more like Earth, or should the Culture become exactly like Earth. It’s the arguments of the Reformation all over again: change the church from within, abandon it and go your own way, or change it from without. This is the central theme and an interesting discussion throughout. It’s a good novella, but not great: the vitriol leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but I enjoyed reading most of it.

3. The vitriol is partly understandable as the whole series is based on Banks’ ideas of what the future should look like. But, outside of the novella, it’s all vitriol with no time given to the other side of the argument. And the one-sidedness comes off bitter and unimaginative. The stories show what Banks hates about this or that, and those of us who live with this or that know some of the positives. This disconnect left me disappointed with the whole.

4. In all, it’s a book of short stories I will not be returning to, except for the novella and one short story mentioned above. I think the longer format of novels was Banks’ strength and look forward to reading more of those in the future.

Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M Banks

1. So ends my first reads of Banks’ Culture Series novels. Here is probably his best dialogue, some structural experimentation, and perhaps the spiritual offspring of Excession and Look to Windward. It’s been some time since I’ve finished a book—a lot of writing and podcasts have filled my time—so let’s see if I can still take useful notes.

2. The two themes that struck me the most here were oughtness and responses to impending death, well, not quite death. I mean the subliming, enfolding, whatever, a state whose most boring grain of sand outshines the heights of our lives. And the real illuminating delight here is the variety of cultural responses to the subliming. It’s joyous for some, somber for others, something to avoid, liberating, or just another bit of reality to accept. The variety of responses allow him to tap into a cultural portrayal that feels true to life. And this is important, especially in such a different world as that which the Culture portrays: the best science fiction is that which portrays humans as human, aliens as alien, and manages to still communicate basic human responses and characteristics truly. The other theme that stuck out was oughtness, and this builds off the subliming theme: how ought one respond to this type of foreknown cultural shift? Through the examples given, Banks is able to give a variety of responses and put some plot to them. He doesn’t really judge any of them except one—those who attempt to preserve their power in the now through the status quo, instead of realizing the coming singularity makes the status quo irrelevant. Where Banks gets to is that one should re-examine life and culture in the new context and one needs to reintegrate into it. For instance, the partiers say that if actions don’t matter in the long term, pleasure is all there is to live for. In another instance, many people embrace a “life-task” or goal to complete before the deadline of subliming arrives. The four-armed main character does this, but ends up staying behind, not subliming with her culture, because she is still so fascinated with the Culture itself, and has really already left her culture behind to become a part of the Culture.
—Set against this oughtness is the man who lives forever when everybody else dies. This builds off a theme present in the rest of the novels: if eternal, corporeal existence is possible, why do Culture citizens choose to die? Banks typically proposes personal boredom, frustration with others, or curiosity as to what comes next as the majority causes, though he also includes a minority of thrill-seekers, people whose emotional lives are pain, or sacrificial lambs for the greater good. But what sets the eternal man apart is his resistance to change.

“So,” she said, “living all this time has been to no purpose, basically.”

“True, but that hardly distinguishes me from anybody else, does it?”

“But shouldn’t it, or there’s no point?”

“No. Living either never has any point, or is always its own point; being a naturally cheery soul, I lean towards the latter. However, just having done more of it than another person doesn’t really make much difference.” The voice from the grey cube paused, then said, “Although … I think living so long might have persuaded me that I am not quite as pleasant a person as I once thought I was.”

Cossont, presented with two opportunities to be scathing just in these last few sentences, was aware she was choosing to take neither. She confined herself to, “Really?” said in a slightly sarcastic tone.

“Well,” the voice said, seemingly oblivious, “one thing that does happen when you live a long time is that you start to realise the essential futility of so much that we do, especially when you see the same patterns of behaviour repeated by succeeding generations and across different species. You see the same dreams, the same hopes, the same ambitions and aspirations, reiterated, and the same actions, the same courses and tactics and strategies, regurgitated, to the same predictable and often lamentable effects, and you start to think, So? Does it really matter? Why really are you bothering with all this? Are these not just further doomed, asinine ways of attempting to fill your vacuous, pointless existence, wedged slivered as it is between the boundless infinitudes of dark oblivion book-ending its utter triviality?”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “Is this a rhetorical question?”

“It is a mistaken question. Meaning is everywhere. There is always meaning. Or at least all things show a disturbing tendency to have meaning ascribed to them when intelligent creatures are present. It’s just that there’s no final Meaning, with a capital M. Though the illusion that there might be is comforting for a certain class of mind.”

“The poor, deluded, fools.”

“I suspect, from your phrasing and your tone of voice, that, as a little earlier, you think you are being sarcastic. Well, no matter. However, there is another reaction to the never-ending plethora of unoriginal idiocies that life throws up with such erratic reliability, besides horror and despair.”

“What’s that?”

“A kind of glee. Once one survives the trough that comes with the understanding that people are going to go on being stupid and cruel to each other no matter what, probably for ever – if one survives; many people choose suicide at this point instead – then one starts to take the attitude, Oh well, never mind. It would be far preferable if things were better, but they’re not, so let’s make the most of it. Let’s see what fresh fuckwittery the dolts can contrive to torment themselves with this time.”

“Not necessarily the most compassionate response.”

“Indeed not. But my point is that it might be the only one that lets you cope with great age without becoming a devout hermit, and therefore represents a kind of filter favouring misanthropy. Nice people who are beginning to live to a great age – as it were – react with such revulsion to the burgeoning horrors that confront them, they generally prefer suicide. It’s only us slightly malevolent types who are able to survive that realisation and find a kind of pleasure – or at least satisfaction – in watching how the latest generation or most recently evolved species can re-discover and beat out afresh the paths to disaster, ignominy and shame we had naively assumed might have become hopelessly over-grown.”

“So basically you’re sticking around to watch us all fuck up?”

“Yes. It’s one of life’s few guaranteed constants.”

Cossont thought about this. “If that’s true, it’s a bit sad.”

“Tough. Life is sometimes.”

“And you’re right: it doesn’t exactly show you in the best light.”

“You’re supposed to admire me for my honesty.”

“Am I?” she said, and reached over and turned the grey cube off.

That was when she decided she’d give the cube to somebody else, who might want it, or at least agree to care for it.

Is this Banks showing us what he has learned when nearing the end of his life? Yes, though I don’t know how much he knew about how soon his end would come at this point. The eternal man does say this as well:

“So, if you’re really so old, tell me what you’ve learned over the years, over the millennia. What are the fruits of your wisdom?”

“They are remarkably few. I have managed to avoid learning too many lessons. That may be what keeps me alive.”

And that’s probably more indicative of Banks’ voice than any other passage I’ve quoted from him, in any of my other notes. He attempts wit and wisdom, formal and gutter, serious and sarcastic simultaneously both as a coping method for his characters, and as a way to keep his readers reading. It works well, whether I agree with his conclusions or not.

3. Structurally, this is much more an adventure novel than his usual ensemble structure: it’s pretty clear right off the bat how characters and events are related here, and rather than gathering disparate elements into a central location for the finale, he has them going and coming according to their own plots, all supporting that central theme, and all relating to each other. A point about subliming is that it leaves things in the Gzilt culture half-done, and hence the novel drops a couple of threads, or takes the Shakespearean kill everybody approach to avoid overtly dropping the threads. It works to support the theme, but also feels like some of the novel may have been unnecessary.

4. The plot relies on violence to move characters and situations, and that feels more lazy than Banks typically is as a writer. There’s one part where an interview is done, then the guards come in and kill the interviewer. This is off-screen, sure, but by being the usual tactic he uses throughout, it feels like he didn’t want to try and find ways around the corners he’d written his plot into. Skip the rest of the scene, then get back to somewhere else. If it happens once, then sure, it happens sometimes. But happening over and over again makes the novel feel more pulp than all but Consider Phlebas did in this series.

5. Also lazy is that some of the non-Culture and non-protagonist characters are two-dimensional, and this is a real negative for me. I’m one who thinks that bad people think they’re doing good, but here there is very little thinking on their part. I wanted to understand them more as people. This felt more like some of his short stories: rejecting other points of views outright rather than arguing against them.

6. In short, a good novel that might be one of his most readable for non-science fiction readers. But in embracing more typical structures and two-dimensional characters, he loses some of what makes his other novels so endearing to me. So it’s a good book, but not one I’ll be returning to quickly.

Surface Detail by Iain M Banks

1. This Culture novel strikes me as a solid book, and I can’t quite tell why I like it this much. It’s solid: the whole thing is well put together, well executed, an enjoyable read, but nothing really stands out much. There is no one thing Banks does exceedingly well here that I can marvel at and praise and ramble on about for pages and pages. But in a sense, that’s why I love this book so much: everything fits well together. This is a comfortable Banks, writing what he knows and doing it well.

2. Like much of Banks’ works, this novel is about international relations on the surface, and personal philosophy, relationships, and motivations on a deeper level.
—The science fiction theme here is Culture being betrayed by allies that imitate Culture to betray them. They’re little pan-human beings that are perfectly beautiful and childlike, but hide evil plots behind that facade. Including their imitation of Culture in order to frame Culture for some mischief they want to get up to.
—In essence, this is the applicable theme as well: the surface details don’t give the whole picture. Vepers, the main antagonist, is a perfect example of this: a popular, fiercely wealthy oligarch who uses his wealth to buy privacy and privilege in order to do whatever he wants—murder, rape, and double deal. But the rest of the main characters also hide behind facades: Led is tattooed to her atoms, never really being seen as a human being until she finds the Culture, but the novelty of that deeply upsets her; Prin turns into a hell demon in order to escape hell after posing as an inmate; Chay pretends to be a mother superior when she has not a religious belief in her body, finding peace through this subterfuge; Yime is a Special Circumstances plant in Quietus who has forgotten that she is SC; Vatueil has changed his mind in the virtual war over the hells and is a traitor time and time again; while Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints both pretends to be Torturer class when really it’s an Abominator class, and hides a heart of kindness behind a facade of brusque lack of political correctness. In these ways, and others, the main characters and most of the secondary ones hide behind constructed surface details in order to gain advantage over their situations.
—It’s the most conspiratorial of the Culture novels, so far—and there are multiple conspiracies on multiple sides. These tiny pan-humans aren’t the only group to hide things from another. Culture, at the end, hides their capabilities to allow the little pan-humans some success that the Culture wants, but still making it look like the pan-humans are the perpetrators.
—The point is to not trust things as they first appear to be. Banks gives both positive and negative examples of this hiding, not judging that people do it, just stating that they do and we better find a way to live with it. The book effectively uses this theme without telling the reader outright that this is the theme. Instead, these situations that I cataloged above show the theme adequately without Banks breaking into some melodramatic monologue illuminating the whole. Often, a book with a weak theme will only reveal its theme through the plot, but here it feels intentional due to how consistent it is in almost every situation. This “theme through showing” tactic is well done and might perhaps be the one thing that Banks does best within the book.

In Valley 308, which was part of the Thrice Flayed Footprint district of the Pavulean Hell, level three, there was an old-fashioned mill with a tall external over-shot wheel, powered by blood. It was part of the punishment of some of the virtual souls in that place that each day they be profusely bled for as long as they could without falling unconscious. There were many thousands of such unfortunates to be bled during each session and they were duly dragged screaming from their nearby pens by grotesquely formed, irresistibly powerful demons and strapped to canted iron tables with drains at their foot. These tables were arranged in serried ranks on the steep banks of the arid valley, which, had one been able to look at it from far enough above, would have been revealed as a ridge forming part of a truly gigantic footprint; hence the district’s name.

3. The characters are all very engaging here, through each having a positive and a negative main characteristic—and both are linked. Often the negative stems from the positive. Led, though bent on revenge, doubts her own ability to enact the revenge that consumes her desires. Prin is so profoundly affected by his experiences in hell that kidnapping, people showing up in his dreams to threaten him, threats to the lives or wellbeing of anybody he ever cared about—nothing fazes him anymore. Chay finds a way to live in hell, but is so changed that she chooses to not go back to the physical reality. Yime thinks highly of herself as this incredibly unique person who turned down SC for Quietus—but she isn’t and once she finds that out she never finds a place to truly belong again. Vatueil finds the side he believes in, but by doing so he betrays his old side and is never trusted again by either. Vepers throws monkey wrenches into everything, shakes things up in unexpected and interesting ways, but it’s all for his own benefit. These internal conflicts allow each character—and each section that focuses on a character—to be incredibly interesting. And Banks shifts back and forth between the characters at a perfect pace, keeping each scene succinct and important, with some rumination, but not so much it bogs the book down. Each of these main characters is allowed space to flourish and find footing in the reader’s mind. This effectively allows each character an interesting conflict that keeps Banks’ structure interesting all the way through.

4. Okay, by this point in the series, I expect the Banks structure of disparate situations and characters slowly converging before everything gets crazy. And Banks doesn’t disappoint. But the start was unexpected: the first three chapters end in three deaths. These three characters come back—two were in virtual worlds, of which one is reborn in the physical world and the other in another virtual world, while the last one was surprised by being reborn in Culture, where she had never been. All three rebirths end up being central parts of the novel, but it is strange when it happens, especially with Banks’ usual tactic of not naming characters right away. It made me think the novel was about death, not subterfuge. This bait and switch is unfortunate, but it does set up the novel nicely in terms of world building. I think this might be an inherent problem with Banks’ typical tactic: the first few chapters introduce the reader to the main characters by jumping between them, and are confusing because they do not immediately link together—though they did in Matter, which might be why that book stands on its own so well.

5. I loved this book. It’s a solid Culture novel and it works well in that context. But it also works well with the applicable theme of dealing with people who are hiding things behind surface details. The characters are all quite engaging and interesting while the story clips along nicely with a great mix of adventure and rumination. It’s not my favorite Culture novel, but I can’t quite figure out why.

Matter by Iain M Banks

1. Compared to Banks' other Culture novels, this one has few characters. Like Inversions, the story closely follows the main characters. Here, the main characters are Turminder Xuss and Djan Seriy Anaplian, Ferbin and Choubris Holse, and Oramen and Neguste; while Tyl Loesp, Liveware Problem, and Tove are the three secondary characters that matter the most. There are a ton of other characters, but they’re in and out to reflect the main characters and provide other points of view about the central discussion of the novel. And that’s what Banks is doing: focusing on the main characters, and using the others to provide plot points, context, and story movement. Where in Excession he revels in tons and tons of characters, this novel has comparatively few. But it doesn’t detract from the scope of the novel: the scope is still satisfyingly complex and varied. I say satisfyingly because the discussions are wrinkled, varied, and deepened through the diversity of examples given in the novel. The dozens of tertiary characters contribute directly to the scope of the novel, while the six main characters keep it focused on the discussion of the novel. This shows Banks thinking deeply about what he includes and writes. It’s a tight, well done choice.

People craved self-importance; they longed to be told they mattered as individuals, not just as part of a mass of people or some historical process. They needed the reassurance that while their life might be hard, bitter and thankless, some reward would be theirs after death. Happily for the governing class, a well-formed faith also kept people from seeking their recompense in the here and now, through riot, insurrection or revolution.

A temple was worth a dozen barracks; a militia man carrying a gun could control a small unarmed crowd only for as long as he was present; however, a single priest could put a policeman inside the head of every one of their flock, for ever.

2. The way the novel converges successfully signposts the ending. This works because drawing the main characters closer together increases the tension—I mean, something has to happen when all the main character get together. He also did this in Excession, but it works very well here because the reader knows it’s coming and he draws it out a bit, allowing that feeling in the reader of knowing more than the characters and agonizing over the characters’ choices because of it. In Excession, everybody comes together except Sleeper Service; then when Sleeper Service finally makes a run for that common location, it surprised me a bit: I didn’t see the story set on Sleeper Service relating too closely, until suddenly it did. Here, all three of the main character pairs are immediately linked through their familial connections, while the three secondary characters are also connected to that family—though Liveware Problem only through Special Circumstances. This immediate connection allows Banks to tell three different sides of the same story. The closeness of the connection means that there isn’t a separate epilogue for any character after the climax, they are all resolved at one go, in the climax itself. This provides a satisfying finish to the plot and allows the epilogue to touch on the central story itself.

3. This novel is a direct mix of fantasy and science fiction. Lord of Light mixed fantasy language into a science fiction story. Inversions told a fantasy story with a science fiction ah-ha moment. This is both, simultaneously and successfully. Here, the Culture deals with societies that are much less advanced than it in general—hence Contact and Special Circumstances. In other words, there are spaceships flying over pike and shot battles. Where Inversions told its story from the side of the contacted, this tells both sides of the story at the same time—both contactee and contactor. And that, as a fan of the series, is a wonderful exploration of Contact.

4. However, though this fan service of exploring a contact situation more deeply is the basis of the story, the novel is not fan service. The theme, and it’s very prominent, is power. Power is the theme, but it’s also the main goal of each character, and drives the plot and story forwards. This triple focus of power shows just how prominent the theme is. Some novels have two themes: one for the story and one for the reader. This novel has one in three tactics: but it doesn’t grow dull because Banks discusses power from multiple points of view. Even just Ferbin and Choubris Holse’s conversations would be enough for me to state that this novel is about power, but Banks allows the theme into every other nook and cranny.

“Still, it is often easier to be the second in command, prince,” Hyrlis said. “The throne is a lonely place, and the nearer you are to it the clearer you see that. There are advantages to having great power without ultimate responsibility. Especially when you know that even the king does not have ultimate power, that there are always powers above. You say [the assassin] was trusted, rewarded, valued, respected . . . Why would he risk that for the last notch of a power he knows is still enchained with limitations?”

The above dialogue example shows how Banks is wrinkling and sustaining this discussion of power: through the characters. Like so many of these characters, Hyrlis is only on-scene for part of one chapter, then gone. Hyrlis exists only in his importance to Ferbin and the theme: nothing else. Like Hyrlis, all of the tertiary and secondary characters reflect the main characters and contextualize the central question, while each of the main characters is simultaneously attempting to locate power, or navigate it. Power is their driving force whether it’s what they want or what they’re reacting to.

That had always been his father’s ultimate aim, Oramen knew, though Hausk had known that he’d never see that day – neither would Oramen, or any children he would ever have – but it was enough to know that one had done one’s bit to further that albeit distant goal, that one’s efforts had formed some sturdy part of the foundations for that great tower of ambition and achievement.

The stage is small but the audience is great, had been one of King Hausk’s favourite sayings. To some degree he meant that the WorldGod watched and hopefully somehow appreciated what they were doing on its behalf, but there was also the implication that although the Sarl were primitive and their civilisation almost comically undeveloped by the standards of, say, the Oct (never mind the Nariscene, still less the Morthanveld and the other Optimae), nevertheless, greatness lay in doing the best you could with what you were given, and that greatness, that fixity of purpose, strength of resolve and decisiveness of action would be watched and noted by those far more powerful peoples and judged not on an absolute scale (on which it would barely register) but on one relative to the comparatively primitive resources the Sarl had available to them.

In a sense, his father had told him once – his contemplative moods were rare, so memorable – the Sarl and people like them had more power than the ungraspably supreme Optimae peoples with their millions of artificial worlds circling in the sky, their thinking machines that put mere mortals to shame and their billions of starships that sailed the spaces between the stars the way an iron warship cruised the waves. Oramen had found this claim remarkable, to put it kindly.

Above, Oramen contemplates his father’s goal, the theme of his father’s life. And guess what? It’s power. This contemplation is him attempting to come to terms with his power by learning from his father. But the only reason Oramen does contemplate this is because he believes his brother and father are both dead, making him the Prince Regent. Being the one about to be the king causes him to start contemplating this question. And this brings up my third point about how Banks supports his theme: power and power-plays drive the plot and characters forwards.

The Sarl would achieve a goal they had been pursuing for almost all the life of their departed king, the Deldeyn would be defeated, the loathsome and hated Aultridia would be confounded, the WorldGod would be protected – who knew? even saved – and the Oct, the long-term allies of the Sarl, would be grateful, one might even say beholden. The New Age of peace, contentment and progress that King Hausk had talked so much about would finally come to pass. The Sarl would have proved themselves as a people and would, as they grew in power and influence within the greater World and eventually within the alien-inhabited skies beyond, take their rightful place as one of the In-Play, as an Involved species and civilisation, a people fit – perhaps, one day, no doubt still some long way in the future – to treat even the Optimae of the galaxy (the Morthanvelds, the Cultures, and who knew what alien others) as their equals.

More than simply assassinations and fights, Banks realizes here that power is what contact is all about—contact being the process of the advanced Culture contacting a more primitive society. Hence the weird dancing around the Morthanveld, hoping to not step on any toes so that when the Morthanveld are finally High-Level Involveds, they will be a close ally of the Culture. Therefore, any contact with them is highly regimented and questions of power define how characters interact with the Morthanveld throughout. Myriad and funny and diverse examples of contact that are spread throughout wonderfully contextualize the central question, but in the end the discussion of power is, appropriately enough, tied off by the plot and story, not some lengthy closing oration. The plot itself, as it does in so many stories, shows the conclusions Banks draws from the theme: namely, power is simultaneously a benefit and a curse, always, no matter how much of it you have, yes even over your own self or a small part of your own self, and no matter how moral or amoral, ethical or unethical you are in using it. The whole novel begins and ends about power: from the assassination of the opening through the struggle for power on and off the planet at the end, this novel is about power and that question drives plot, story, character, and discussion to a satisfying level. I’m still interested, at the end, in discussing power, despite having just read 593 pages of discussion on it. That’s a testament to how wrinkled, diverse, and varied Banks allowed his theme to get. As always, on this site I’m not going to go into what Banks says about power, just how he says it. But I look forward to discussing these ideas and hierarchies with people.

5. And that writing! I mentioned the plot above, contrasting it to a closing oration, but the two closing orations are actually spectacular: “Oh go and fuck yourself,” closes the novel and “Ah, family life, eh?” closes the epilogue. Obviously, Banks still uses that wonderful, contrasting, colloquial and formal back and forth—as described in my notes for Excession. But here, he re-injects some of the gorgeous language found in the mouths of aliens in the first two novels. However, instead of the lengthy oration in Consider Phlebas—see long quote in point four of this link—here there are lines and paragraphs spread throughout that just make me stop and stare.

“What fleeting titillations life continues to throw up, many-fold.”

+++

This is how power works, how force and authority assert themselves, this is how people are persuaded to behave in ways that are not objectively in their best interests, this is the kind of thing you need to make people believe in, this is how the unequal distribution of scarcity comes into play, at this moment and this, and this . . .

+++

“Power over others is the least and most of powers, betruth. To balance such great success with transient lack of same is fit.”

And this last example comes out of the mouth of an Oct. Through the Oct and other alien species, Banks varies his writing immensely: each has their own voice. For instance, that second quote above is a Culture citizen internal monologuing. Here is how an Oct talks:

“Oramen-man, Prince. That who gave that you might be given unto life is no more, as our ancestors, the blessed Involucra, who are no more, to us are. Grief is to be experienced, thereto related emotions, and much. I am unable to share, being. Nevertheless. And forbearance I commend unto you. One assumes. Likely, too, assumption takes place. Fruitions. Energy transfers, like inheritance, and so we share. You; we. As though in the way of pressure, in subtle conduits we do not map well.”

The Oct place verbs at the ends of sentences, they imply connecting words and subjects, they speak in phrases of probability. And the rest of the alien voices Banks uses are also changed from the Culture's and narrator's voices. In short, I love it. The wonderful colloquially formal language the Culture tends to speak is polished here, but it’s also contrasted with alien patterns and word choices that keep the novel’s writing changing, exciting, and varied. So far, this is the best writing I’ve read from Banks—the most engaging and consistent. He keeps getting better.

6. The buildup to the ending works well here, unlike the too lengthy ending to Consider Phlebas. Where Consider Phlebas drags out the buildup to the ending—it simply takes too long and I got bored—here he pulls out the buildup a ways, but not too far. Having the characters still coming together towards the end allows Banks to jump between them and resolve smaller threads in their stories before converging them and ramping up the converged action for a couple of chapters to the end. This tactic allows the ending to be more diversely set and charactered, giving it a variety that keeps me interested and the novel well paced.

7. The pacing of the whole story sticks to a typical tactic that I’m really starting to enjoy when it’s done well: the pulp fiction tactic of ending each chapter unresolved, then moving to the next chapter’s fairly slow opening and different character and location. It isn’t heavy handed click-bait type writing—it’s not that pulpy. Where the series A Song of Ice and Fire is pulpy with the way chapters end by implying main characters are dead, and then they aren’t; here, when Ferbin finally sees Djan for the first time, the chapter ends right after he realizes who she is. The next chapter is not about them, but once it gets back to those two a couple of chapters later, it opens with them hugging and beginning to talk. This chapter structure helps structure the whole novel and keeps the whole thing exciting.

8. In all, this book impresses me immensely. Banks thinks deeply about his writing and he is so skilled that the whole book is incredibly tight—like how chapter pacing ties into book pacing, or theme ties into every level of the novel. This is a feat of storytelling. It’s exceedingly well constructed. It’s also well written—the language is wonderful and wonderfully varied. But it’s not all a writer’s treat: it’s an exciting novel that held my interest through both the story and the theme—not just the writing and construction. The novel stands well on its own, with no other Culture novels being read first by the reader. In all, this is easily my second favorite Culture novel, and could be as good as The Player of Games. The two novels are so close in quality that I would have to read both again in order to tell which I like better. And I look forward to that! Right now, I think they’re essentially indistinguishable. Masterful book.

He had already asked the Nariscene ship why it bore the name it did.

“The source of my name,” the vessel had replied, “The Hundredth Idiot, is a quotation: ‘One hundred idiots make idiotic plans and carry them out. All but one justly fail. The hundredth idiot, whose plan succeeded through pure luck, is immediately convinced he’s a genius.’ It is an old proverb.”

Holse had made sure Ferbin was not within earshot and muttered, “I think I’ve known a few hundredths in my time.”

Look to Windward by Iain M Banks

1. Whoa. This is a meditation on some heavy matters. The theme here is simply put: death and the afterlife. Death takes center stage and runs away with the play, so to speak. But not in a bad way. Every major character ruminates on or experiences death: suicidal tendencies, haunting experiences with the deaths of others, casual deadly sports, and war. The plethora of death and deaths provides a wide angle view on the subject in the Culture universe, allowing Banks to delve deeply into the topic. He comes to no real conclusions though: rather showing positives and negatives to all the experiences involved. Suicide, for example, is the last wish of a soldier whose spouse tragically died and he cannot move past it at all. He is jealous of her death, so he seeks his own through many philosophical ruminations. On the other side of things, two people who enjoy lava rafting accidentally capsize their canoe. Both die, but one has backed up their mind-state, essentially their soul, and is reborn. The other has not, choosing instead to live life once, believing that the experiences will be more poignant for it. These two examples show two extremes of the spectrum contained within, and the book delves into other examples: the horrors of mass-death in war, the horrors of single death in war, the deaths of AIs, et cetera. And this is really a theme, in the sense that he’s exploring death, not really making an argument with it or coming to a conclusion.

'I'm sorry, Custodian. You must get bored hearing me say the same things, day after day.'

'You never say quite the same thing, Tibilo.' The old monk gave a small smile. 'Because there is change.'

Quilan smiled too, though more as a polite response. 'What does not change, Custodian, is that the only thing I really wish for with any sincerity or passion now is death.'

'It is hard to believe, feeling as you do at the moment, that there will come a time when life seems good and worthwhile, but it will come.'

'No, Custodian. I don't think it will. Because I wouldn't want to be the person who had felt as I do now and then walked - or drifted - away from that feeling until things felt better. That is precisely my problem. I prefer the idea of death to what I feel just now, but I would prefer to feel the way I do now for ever than to feel better, because feeling better would mean that I am not the one who loved her any more, and I could not bear that.' He looked at the old monk with tears in his eyes.

2. The writing is as good as Banks has achieved. He’s still using that wonderful formal-colloquialism—the close use of formal sentences and word choices with colloquial ones, having few half-measures in between. It’s such an engaging, interesting voice, and it really helps the reader enjoy the whole novel. Throughout, his voice and sentence structures really shine.

3. The plot here proceeds linearly for most of the novel, but there are a couple of places where it steps out: the researcher, the e-dust assassin, and the backstories of Major Quilan and Masaq’ Hub. The thing that is strange about what Banks does here is that he jumps both forwards and backwards, rather than just having backstory. For instance, some of the story involving the researcher occurs much, much farther in the future than the scene that comes right after it in the novel. Also, the E-Dust Assassin shows up much earlier in the novel than when it enacts its assassinations. At the same time, Hub and Quilan’s frequent backflashes push the narrative backwards in time. So the plot jumps both forwards and backwards, which is kind of unique, I think. And it works for him. He leaves enough details out that the assassin isn’t disorienting, just puzzling and interesting. Though one does have to trust Banks to resolve it, and he does.

4. Denying detail initially is a tactic that Banks often adopts, which I am into because it works and it’s a massive middle finger to the intro-info-dump that I hate. Banks will start a chapter, not giving any names, but it’s typically only a few lines before the reader recognizes who and what is going on through descriptions or dialogue, then a few paragraphs before Banks reveals for sure who and what is going on. This tactic is a sort of puzzle for the reader at the start of new chapters or sections—a little mystery to figure out while the plot and book are moving. He doesn’t do this at the start of the first chapter—he reveals names and places initially, in order to place the reader. But he still denies the horrendous intro-info-dump.

5. One thing Banks is really getting better at here is characters. The characters are all distinct and engaging—despite being plays on tropes: the gentle giant, the curious simian, the celebrity dog, the benevolent leader who is benevolent because of shame for past deeds, the flighty girl, the gullible old man (drone) addicted to propriety, the almost-nihilistic philosopher who can’t let go of a past relationship cum tragedy, and the military leader bent on revenge. These eight are the main characters. To explain one example, the flighty girl is not flighty in the sense the phrase implies: rather, she is into flying with a set of artificial wings—gliding more than flying—or a hot air balloon; this shows how he plays up these tropes, which is engaging and funny in a way the novel needs to offset the potentially depressing theme. However, these characters are actually engaging for themselves: the gentle giant is gentle, sure, and a lot of his actions are, but he’s also a journalist attempting to understand people and their experiences. He goes lava rafting as a sort of social experiment and in an attempt to understand the allure of it—that’s interesting and unusual. So he uses the tropes in inventive ways, but also goes beyond them to contemplate and show extensions of the tropes. Essentially questioning what that trope of person really would be like. In other words, if stereotypes are loosely based in reality, he is getting towards the reality of these tropes.

6. I don’t buy the criticism that the Hub’s actions at the end are a deus ex machina. I think the Hub noticing the displaced objects makes sense in the context—his job is to see everything on the orbital and in the hub and avoid disasters, so of course he notices what is displaced there. But I also am not wholly satisfied with the ending. It does a fantastic job of closing the plot because Banks strikes a balance between what is implied by the story and what I want by the end. I am rooting for Quilan to go on living and find his release, for avoidance of the potential mass murder, for Hub forgiving itself, and for the researcher saving the day. The story implies mass murder and stark despair. It’s a wonderful, brilliant balance Banks strikes in the mass murder being averted, while two characters die. But Banks never resolves the theme. If the resolve is simply that death is natural and inevitable and good in its way, that hasn't been terribly insightful since Solomon. Perhaps by having the plethora of death in the novel he denies himself being able to say one conclusion because he says so many conclusions. And that’s what didn’t satisfy me about the ending: the theme wasn't resolved. Though perhaps the amount of story after the two characters die is a bit long, it simply ties up other loose ends.

7. In all, it’s a good novel. I enjoyed Look to Windward. It’s written really well and the storytelling is good. But the unresolved theme certainly niggles at the end. His characters are so strong, but it’s not the best Culture novel I’ve read. Nor is it the worst. The quality between the first Culture novel, Consider Phlebas, and this one staggers me. He has consistently improved and gotten better as a writer and storyteller. I’m looking forward to the next one.

Inversions by Iain M Banks

1. Here Iain M Banks discusses a Special Circumstances (SC) operation from the point of view of the non-Culture planet where contact is taking place—an early Renaissance or late Medieval era, humanoid populated planet. But it’s no Gunboat Diplomacy: there’s no GCU floating over the castle exactly like bricks don’t. Rather, it’s two SC people attempting to subversively advance a culture that has just invented guns. They fundamentally disagree about the method most appropriate to the situation—

Was it better to leave them alone or was it better to try and make life better for them? Even if you decided it was the right thing to do to make life better for them, which way did you do this? Did you say, Come and join us and be like us? Did you say, Give up all your own ways of doing things, the gods that you worship, the beliefs you hold most dear, the traditions that make you who you are? Or do you say, We have decided you should stay roughly as you are and we will treat you like children and give you toys that might make your life better?

—so they work in two separate kingdoms, trying their two tactics and seeing which one works better, which I think here means more effective, efficient, and quickly. Their goal is not to increase the technological level from the outside, but work inside these societies to change the thinking of the people to be more agreeable to Culture norms. DeWar leaves them alone and acts solely as a bodyguard for one ruler, mostly quietly; while Vosill works as a doctor for a king in a nearby society, giving her opinions and ways of thinking almost too freely. This synopsis shows the bare bones of the undercurrents in the novel, while the novel itself is taken up by the stories of their time on this planet. Banks doesn’t explicitly state anything in this synopsis—the quote above is taken from a story DeWar tells his ruler’s son. This book is written like it’s medieval fiction. There are really only a couple of places where Banks lets glimpses of this undercurrent in: including a few jokes punning on the words Culture and Special Circumstances. This tactic works well to really show what contact is like from two different societies, two different ways of contact from the other side—a perspective the Culture novels haven’t explored yet. (I should note that there are also other theories that could fit: perhaps this is all a Cuture set-up and everybody except Vosill and DeWar have been mentally altered by the Culture to forget about the Culture in order to run this giant experiment. This would also fit the facts and mysteries given by Banks here.) So, in short, it’s a fantasy novel that’s actually a Culture novel, but being written as the memoir of Oelph, who knows nothing of the Culture, it’s medieval fiction.

2. The plot is split between the two main characters—they take turns at chapters, one about Vosill, then one about DeWar, then Vosill again, then DeWar again, et cetera. This tactic was used by Banks in Use of Weapons, but here I think it works much better. I can’t quite put my finger on why though. Let me try and nail that down. In Weapons, it seemed a little forced, a little heavy-handed—mostly in the way he hid things from the reader and spoke of characters in nicknames in order to not reveal the a-ha moment before its time; he held things close to his chest for a long time. Too long. Here, he just tells two stories and they are loosely related—they’re probably taking place simultaneously. He reveals almost everything: Vosill and DeWar aren’t obviously Culture at first, though it becomes apparent within the first third of the novel. I think it works better for me here because both stories could be read independently, and enjoyed, without the interesting difference in opinion between DeWar and Vosill. This allows that a-ha moment to be gravy, not a long-held-off reveal—like my complaint about Consider Phlebas being much too built for the resolution. Here, Banks increases the reader’s understanding throughout, instead of relying on the comic book-esque end-page reveal. I think this works better in general, at least it works better here than it did in Weapons.

3. The writing is mostly unobtrusive. It’s precise. But it also catches a cadence that works well for the fantasy setting. It’s mostly down to his sentence structures, which are complex, and his word choices, which are slightly archaic. Not as much as Katherine Addison, but more so than his earlier Culture novels. This cadence helps further disguise the science fiction undercurrent of this fantasy novel.

4. Outside of the Contact context, the theme here, the applicable one, is useful plebs interacting with rulers, or middle class people interacting with kings. Both Vosill and DeWar have skills their respective rulers find useful, but they are servants, not equals. And the way both of them interact with their ruler is to me the main theme here: Vosill is content being alone, but spends a lot of energy building an actual relationship; DeWar is intrusive, but because he is so nosy, he makes the ruler uncomfortable and isn’t able to form a relationship outside of worship. This theme is applicable to a boss-employee relationship—in other words, be prepared and exceed the boss’ expectations, rather than being pushy and over-eager. The same here is applied to interactions between cultures. It’s a bit weak, as an applicable theme, to me. But within the context of the Culture novels, it holds a lot of interest for a fan. It’s not quite fan-service, like Ill Met in Lankhmar is, but it’s going that direction.

5. The world-building is sparse because it’s just medieval fiction—not even fantasy, really, because there is no magic outside of Vosill’s Culture knife-missile, which is never understood by the narrator Oelph. So, by using the familiar he does not have to spend time or energy building out a unique world and can get right to the story. It’s similar to a lot of pulp fiction in that way—familiar already, but taking a closer look at the cultures involved.

6. The characters are well understood by the reader. Vosill, Oelph, DeWar, Perrund, Lattens, and the two rulers are all unique, well-built characters. Perrund is built through dialogue almost exclusively—what she says and what she explains about her backstory shows her character. DeWar and Oelph are built through a combination of actions, interior monologue, and dialogue. Since these two are the most apparent to the reader: they get told, shown, and explained. Vosill, Lattens, and the two rulers are explained through dialogue and actions. What I’m trying to say is that Banks uses multiple tactics to build the important characters that spend a lot of time on-scene, and builds the other characters with fewer tactics—just dialogue and/or actions. This tactic helps the reader prioritize characters: by getting more information about DeWar and Oelph, I understand them more and am more interested in them. It effectively names the main characters without needing to have them always on-scene.

7. This novel does a lot of things really well and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s an interesting thing, with the split narrative and the fantasy-science fiction mashup. But the theme, plot, and writing might not quite stand up to the interest of the structure and tone. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good book, but it’s not great. Because the Culture undercurrent is so sparse, somebody coming to this book as their first Culture novel could be very, very confused at the Special Circumstances, Culture, and Contact jokes and scenes: it would be strange how the knives were bent, how those three people died, and where Vosill and DeWar disappear to at the end. So, it doesn’t stand on its own, but it’s a great addition to the Culture series and, having read a bunch of others, I loved this book.

Excession by Iain M Banks

1. What’s interesting to me about Banks is how every Culture book sets me up for the next: after Use of Weapons, I was curious about AI cores in general, and this book’s major characters are mostly AI cores—ships. After Consider Phlebas, I was curious about Culture on a non-wartime footing, and The Player of Games certainly gave me that. After The Player of Games, I was interested in other contact methods besides game tournaments, and Use of Weapons certainly satisfied that curiosity. Now I’m curious about the Galactic Council, so I’ll have to see if the next book deals with that. This brief explanation shows how within the same series, Banks is exploring wide ranging parts of his built-world, which allows him to examine and deal with many different themes and topics consistently.

2. The themes here are central—more so than the overarching plot or sub-plots. The themes here are simply stated: love, death, and the fact that as far as we know, intelligence never changes. Here we have an excession—a contact or artifact from outside Culture that exceeds the technological limits of Culture. Culture is currently in the process of civilizing the Affront, but this Excession throws them into a panic and, well, they end up not being any more moral or advanced than the Affront are. Despite their lack of organic body, despite their hyper-intelligence, despite everything, the AI are just like us. They’re petty, they’re searching for meaning, they’re cliquish. In other words, Banks doesn’t believe post-singularity (here it’s post-sublimation, but essentially the same concept) humanity will suddenly be better moral agents, or hyperintelligent to the point of godhood. He thinks beings are like beings are like beings, and his plot lays this out brilliantly. And they’ll always face a singularity—death is the most discussed one here. Banks uses death to explore meaning and morality. I remember in college a professor once said that only works that deal with death and love are still existing in the cannon. This book would work for that definition: death is contemplated and experienced in detail here, while Dajeil and Genar’s extended discussion and memory of love is poignant and fascinating throughout. These themes simply take over the plot, take over the book, and drive it forward. They are central to the whole thing and satisfyingly discussed, observed, and faceted.

3. And that’s a negative for some people: the book isn’t terribly easy to follow or get a good grasp on, especially as a new Culture reader. I can imagine this could be very confusing because there is little plot to follow. The plot is important within the context of the Culture that Banks has set up over the rest of the novels, but I’m not sure this novel stands on its own perfectly. I loved it, but I think it might need the other novels to work here.

4. One other common criticism about this book says that the importance of the plot points exists solely within the context of the Culture novels and Banks’ made-up physics. But that criticism ignores three things to me: the plot is not the point, the discussion of themes is—not to say the novel is plotless, just that the point is the examination of death, morality, and love; it’s science fiction, and invented importance is the name of many plots, so I don’t see this criticism as necessarily a detriment. Some people dislike this novel for these reasons, but it probably comes down to a matter of taste.

5. The language is fascinating. Banks travels back and forth between colloquialisms and the more formal narrative voice in a super engaging way. He’s been doing this throughout the rest of the novels, most apparently in his ship names, but he really nails it here. I mean it: this novel is a pure pleasure to read because of the writing. It’s fascinating with the themes and sub-plots and character creation, but I would still recommend it to people solely for the utterly delightful voice that Banks has developed over the last three Culture novels, and perfects here. Here’s an example:

The Grey Area watched it all happen, carried in its cradle of fields by the three silent warships. Part of it wanted to whoop and cry hurrah, seeing this detonation of materiel, sufficient to smash a war machine ten times - a hundred times - the size of the approaching Affronter fleet; ah the things you could do if you had the time and patience and no treaties to adhere to or agreements to uphold!

Another part of it watched with horror as the Excession swelled, obliterating the view ahead, rampaging out like an explosion still greater than that of ships the Sleeper Service had just produced.

Here’s another example, showing how this switching embraces a wry wit:

As a thermonuclear fireball was to a log burning in a grate, so this ravening cloud of destruction was to a fusion explosion. What she was now witnessing was something even the GSV was undeniably impressed with, not to mention mortally threatened by. Ulver saw how to click out of the experience, and did so.

She'd been in for less than two seconds. In that time her heart had started racing, her breathing had become fast and laboured and a cold sweat had broken on her skin. Wow, she thought, some drug! Genar-Hofoen and Dajeil Gelian were staring at her. She suspected she hardly needed to say anything, but swallowed and said, 'I don't think it's kidding.'

One more example showing the contrast of the switch:

There was silence for a moment. Then Ulver collapsed back dramatically in her seat, arms dangling towards the floor, legs splayed out under the table, gaze directed upwards at the translucent dome. 'Fucking hell!' she shouted. She tried accessing the Jaundiced Outlook's senses, and eventually found a view of hyperspace ahead of the Sleeper Service. More or less back to normal, indeed. She shook her head. 'Fucking hell,' she muttered.

I never thought I’d be praising a Banks novel this much for the writing, but this is a wonderful voice. For such a long novel, this wry-wit is a great way to break it up and keep the reader interested. Through these extended discussions of death, these little lighter moments keep the reader from getting bogged down.

6. The character creation embraces variation within certain sets of characters: hardcore Culture members, outlier Culture members, and Culture outsiders. This could also be stated as humans, ships, and others. But these two categories mix and match in interesting ways: Genar is a human Culture outlier; the Excession is a Culture outsider that is an other; Sleeper Service is a hardcore Culture ship. This variation allows characters to fit into the plot and themes of this novel, but still retain uniqueness. There are a lot of characters—the Interesting Times Gang, the biologicals, the other ships, the others—and sometimes it is hard to keep track of them all. Banks attempts to make it easier on the reader by giving characters distinctive names—Shoot them Later, Genar, Ethics Gradient, Ulver, Risingmoon Parchseason IV, Honest Mistake. But though he names them distinctly, there are so many it’s still hard to keep them all straight at times. Again, he helps the readers by making much of the dialogue basically email based. And this really does solve the problem for the me. But still, the characters are mostly quite engaging. (See this wonderful Wikipedia page listing ship names in Banks' Culture series. The ships are themselves independent moral entities, characters, citizens, beings.)

7. Back to the writing for a brief couple of other notes. The writing here experiments with transmissions that mirror emails and include technical information. Some of the information given is uninteresting and uninformative—read it once and the rest can be skimmed. But the writing helps get the reader in the mindset of the style and type of communication involved. My second note here about the writing is that lengthy portion with the message to Ulver. Here, Banks attempts to write essentially a computer program the offers secure communications. It’s strange writing, but it works for the book because, again, it gets the reader in a mindset that reflects the workings of the communication involved. It’s effective despite working within a new logic for writing.

8. The structure is convoluted, like Use of Weapons was. Most of the novel is straight narrative, but Genar’s chapters often include flashbacks to his earlier relationship with Dajeil. The structure also jumps around between situations and doesn’t proceed at a consistent pace—some chapters are seconds later than the last, some are weeks. However, Banks is able to tie these disparate tactics together through keeping the plots where these tactics are used distinct in their own chapters, and only bleeding them together over the last portion of the novel. He also includes distinct, unimportant scenes—like the two bat-ball scenes—that excellently build characters, but do not bog the book down in plot-unimportant scenes like those in Consider Phlebas did, where most of the book lacked importance and if it was there to build characters, it took too long. The structure works well here and that conclusion is spectacular—everything came together all at once and I read quickly through the last third or so of the novel.

9. In all, this is a fantastic book, but you might have to have read other Culture books in order to fully understand the importance and interest this book can hold—it doesn’t necessarily stand on its own, but a better sequel is hard to think of off the top of my head. The characters and plot are interesting, but the themes and writing really take this book from good to great. It’s a great book, and well worth the read. Like The Player of Games, I want to read this one again. Sure, The Player of Games was more my book than this, because it stands on its own much better, but this is clearly my second favorite Culture novel that I’ve read.

Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks

This one should be fairly short, and not terribly in depth, because I got sick right after reading this and spent a week in bed.

1. The one that everybody talks about with this book is the structure. To describe it, there are two stories going on: the chapters progressing forwards in time and numerals progressing backwards in time. To give an example, by the end of the book with returned to the formative moments of the main character in the numerals, while the chapters have brought us to a conclusion of this part of his life. Banks also includes a prologue and epilogue outside of this structure, as well as infuses these structures with multiple flashbacks. This creates a fairly complicated thing, but I think banks mostly pulls it off. It's legible, but there are parts that lag. For instance, the portion at the observatory, where they find a game, and nothing else happens in that chapter. Boring. But mostly he holds it all together. It's an interesting idea done passably. I'd like to see it done with a little more skill. It just creates this to really weird pacing where super tense moments and mundane moments are placed in areas that create odd relations between them. And I think it could work, it just doesn't quite happen here. Almost. But not yet.

2. The writing does not improve either.

'Let me tell you a sort of story.'

'Must you?'

'No more than you must listen.'

'Yeah... okay, then. Anything to pass the time.'

'The story is this. It's a true story, by the way, not that that matters. There is a place where the existence or non-existence of souls is taken very seriously indeed. Many people, whole seminaries, colleges, universities, cities and even states devote almost all their time to the contemplation and disputation of this matter and related topics. About a thousand years ago, a wise philosopher-king who was considered the wisest man in the world announced that people spent too much time discussing these things, and could, if the matter was settled, apply their energies to more practical pursuits which would benefit everybody. So he would end the argument once and for all. He summoned the wisest men and women from every part of the world, and of every known persuasion, to discuss the matter. It took many years to assemble every single person who wished to take part, and the resulting debates, papers, tracts, books, intrigues and even fights and murders took even longer. The philosopher-king took himself off to the mountains to spend these years alone, emptying his mind of everything so that he would be able, he hoped, to come back once the process of argument was ended and pronounce the final decision. After many years they sent for the king, and when he felt ready he listened to everyone who thought they had something to say on the existence of souls. When they had all said their piece, the king went away to think. After a year, the king announced he had come to his decision. He said that the answer was not quite so simple as everybody had thought, and he would publish a book, in several volumes, to explain the answer. The king set up two publishing houses, and each published a great and mighty volume. One repeated the sentences, "Souls do exist. Souls do not exist," time after time, part after part, page after page, section after section, chapter after chapter, book after book. The other repeated the words, "Souls do not exist. Souls do exist," in the same fashion. In the language of the kingdom, I might add, each sentence had the same number of words, even the same number of letters. These were the only words to be found beyond the title page in all the thousands of pages in each volume. The king had made sure that the books began and finished printing at the same time, and were published at the same time, and that exactly the same number were published. Neither of the publishing houses had any perceivable superiority or seniority over the other. People searched the volumes for clues; they looked for a single repetition, buried deep in the volumes, where a sentence or even a letter had been missed out or altered, but they found none. They turned to the king himself, but he had taken a vow of silence, and bound up his writing hand. He would still nod or shake his head in reply to questions concerning the governing of his kingdom, but on the subject of the two volumes, and the existence or otherwise of souls, the king would give no sign. Furious disputes arose, many books were written; new cults began. Then a half-year after the two volumes had been published, two more appeared, and this time the house that had published the volume beginning, "Souls do not exist," published the volume which began, "Souls do exist." The other publisher followed suit, so that theirs now began, "Souls do not exist." This became the pattern. The king lived to be very old, and saw several dozen volumes published. When he was on his death bed, the court philosopher placed copies of the book on either side of him, hoping the king's head would fall to one side or the other at the moment of death, so indicating by the first sentence of the appropriate volume which conclusion he had really come to... but he died with his head straight on the pillow and with his eyes, under the eyelids, looking straight ahead. That was a thousand years ago,' Ky said. 'The books are published still; they have become an entire industry, an entire philosophy, a source of un-ending argument and -'

'Is there an ending to this story?' he asked, holding up one hand.

'No,' Ky smiled smugly. 'There is not. But that is just the point.'

He shook his head, got up and left the Crew Lounge.

'But just because something does not have an ending,' Ky shouted, 'doesn't mean it doesn't have a...' The man closed the elevator door, outside in the corridor; Ky rocked forward in the seat and watched the lift-level indicator ascend to the middle of the ship. '... conclusion,' Ky said, quietly.

It's passable, but not spectacular. There was one other good part:

He loved the plasma rifle. He was an artist with it; he could paint pictures of destruction, compose symphonies of demolition, write elegies of annihilation, using that weapon. He stood, thinking about it, while the wind moved dead leaves round his feet and the ancient stones faced into the wind. They hadn't made it off the planet. The capsule had been attacked by... something. He couldn't tell from the damage whether it had been a beam weapon or some sort of warhead going off nearby. Whatever it had been, it had disabled them. Clamped to the outside of the capsule, he'd been lucky to be on the side that shielded him from whatever had hit it. Had he been on the other side, facing the beam or the warhead, he'd be dead. They must have been hit by some crude effector weapon as well, because the plasma rifle seemed to have fused. It had been cradled between his suit and the capsule skin and couldn't have been affected by whatever wrecked the capsule itself, but the weapon had smoked and got hot, and when they'd finally landed - Beychae shaken but unhurt - and opened up the gun's inspection panels, it was to find a melted, still-warm mess inside.

The writing just doesn't really engage me, and that's a shame. The plot is mostly exciting, the structure is interesting, he's tackling topics of forgiveness and redemption, and yet the writing lets it all down by simply being unimaginative on the whole. This is very same-y throughout.

3. The theme here discusses redemption and forgiveness, but focuses on doing so from inside oneself. The main character is proud of some of his past actions, but intensely guilty of others—both sets in service to the same goal, and that's where his turmoil comes from.

The man stood on a tiny spur of clay and watched the roots of the huge tree as they were uncovered and washed bare by a gurgling wash of dun-coloured water. Rain swarmed through the air; the broad brown swell of rushing water tearing at the roots of the tree leapt with thrashing spray. The rain alone had brought visibility down to a couple of hundred metres and had long since soaked the man in the uniform to the skin. The uniform was meant to be grey, but the rain and the mud had turned it dark brown. It had been a fine, well-fitting uniform, but the rain and the mud had reduced it to a flopping rag. The tree tipped and fell, crashing back into the brown torrent and spraying mud over the man, who stepped back, and lifted his face to the dull grey sky, to let the incessant rain wash the mud from his skin. The great tree blocked the thundering stream of brown slurry and forced some of it over the clay spur, forcing the man further back, along a crude stone wall to a high lintel of ancient concrete, which stretched, cracked and uneven, up to a small ugly cottage squatting near the crown of the concrete hill. He stayed, watching the long brown bruise of the swollen river as it flowed over and ate into the little isthmus of clay; then the spur collapsed, the tree lost its anchorage on that side of the river, and was turned round and turned over and transported bodily on the back of the tumbling waters, heading into the sodden valley and the low hills beyond. The man looked at the crumbling bank on the other side of the flood, where the great tree's roots protruded from the earth like ripped cables, then he turned and walked heavily up towards the little cottage. He walked round it. The vast square concrete plinth, nearly a half-kilometre to a side, was still surrounded by water; brown waves washed its edges on every side. The towering hulks of ancient metal structures, long since fallen into disrepair, loomed through the haze of rain, squatting on the pitted and cracked surface of the concrete like forgotten pieces in some enormous game. The cottage - already made ridiculous by the expanse of concrete around it - looked somehow even more grotesque than the abandoned machines, just because of their proximity. The man looked all about as he walked round the building, but saw nothing that he wanted to see. He went into the cottage. The assassin flinched as he threw open the door. The chair she was tied to - a small wooden thing - was balanced precariously against a thick set of drawers, and when she jerked, its legs rasped on the stone floor and sent chair and girl sliding to the ground with a whack. She hit her head on the flagstones and cried out. He sighed. He walked over, boots squelching with each step, and dragged the chair upright, kicking a piece of broken mirror away as he did so. The woman was hanging slackly, but he knew she was faking.

He effectively treats with this topic: the main character remains in tension and these tensions do affect the story and his twin arcs deeply. And in the end he comes down on the side of forgiveness from others:

Sma turned, face almost bloodless, to look at the body of the man lying on the bed... while Skaffen-Amtiskaw worked on, engrossed in its struggle to make good.

Sma can't handle it, but the drone, he's busy trying to make the universe a better place, one medical procedure at a time. I think that in the context of the Culture, this is Banks saying the humans should use their geritocracy to better others more vigorously than they do. To us, it means we should be charitable and volunteer more to help and understand people, and forgive.

4. After The Player of Games was so good, I really had high hopes for this novel. But it wasn't what it was trying to be. It could've been so much more. I think in terms of pacing, this is a clear step backwards and it feels like the interesting structure was more than Banks could handle. The writing doesn't progress at all. However, the story was interesting. By this point in the world building, I was curious about the ins and outs of Special Circumstances, and this really illuminated that for me satisfactorily. But that's just fan service. As a literary artifact, this is an interesting failure. It's interesting, nobody can deny that. But it just doesn't pull off what it attempts consistently enough.