PrologueStars were barely visible through the tiny oval. The reader looked up from his novel, blinked. Checked his watch -- still hours to go. His wife sat slumped next to him, still asleep. Some people could sleep on planes. Some people couldn't."What are you reading?" asked the man on the reader's left.The reader checked himself before the sigh escaped him. He hated it when people talked to him on planes. Especially when he was trying to read. Especially when he was reading a book with a spaceship on the cover."Oh, just a sci-fi book," he muttered."What, like a Star War?" the man asked, his eyes now bright with attention. "My kids love that Clone Wars show."This time the reader wasn't quick enough to stop himself.OneThe man looked up from the small gray device in his hand. He rubbed his eyes, tired from spending the last several hours staring at a text readout on the object's dull display. He sighed. "At least there wasn't any glare. I could have read that in direct sunlight. Not that I have been outside today."His finger lingered over a small button on the right side of the device. Somehow he felt like clicking that button didn't offer the air of finality he wanted after such a sustained period of concentration. His mind wandered over what he'd just read. It had been, intermittently, a powerfully moving experience. It had also been a bit tedious from time to time, but in that it was like his life. "At least I had a comfortable chair. A... chair."He rose quickly, twisting around and nearly knocking over his small desk chair. "Made of metal. Good."He sighed, relieved.IVIt had been a good meeting, Joel thought. The group members had really seemed to enjoy China Miéville. Good. It had been nice to see them respond positively to a book he'd loved, especially after the mixed reaction to The Player of Games.That still seemed strange, Joel thought. "How could anyone not love that book? I could read 10 Culture books just to get more of the drones and talking spaceships!"Perdido Street Station seemed a better candidate for a divided audience, longer, more violent, and more a fantasy novel than sci-fi. But everyone had loved it. David Brin had a hard road ahead of him if he expected to top it. Even with the talking dolphins.Talking dolphins. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Hugo Award. Nebula too. But after sentient cactai and slake-moths, intelligent marine life didn't seem as... novel.Joel scanned his bookshelves, quickly calculating. A month until the next meeting. Plenty of time to fit in a different book before moving on. His eye wandered to his sci-fi collection, which had been growing rapidly as of late, a good sign as any that It was behind him.He made a snap decision: why not read an entire book just for more drones and talking spaceships? He picked up Use of Weapons and studied the cover.Two"That was really quite an interesting novel," the man said later. The drone looked at him blankly, emanating an orange sheen the man had come to understand was the drone's way of communicating indifference."I quite enjoyed it. Iain M. Banks Culture universe is always fun to play around in. I love the fact that you never really know where the book is going. This one switches main characters halfway through while telling separate, linked stories across multiple time frames. A prologue and an epilogue that both take place after the end of the book. One of the story threads is even moving backward! Really, just on a simple narrative level, it was quite ambitious.""Meow," said the drone."Smartass.""Sometimes I could really do without these drones."IIIJoel drove in silence. For once, no audiobook was playing over his car's stereo. He hadn't even turned on the radio.The book club meeting had been a disaster. He should have known. Why was he expecting this time to be any better, after that Philip Roth fiasco, after trying to discuss the complexities of One Hundred Years of Solitude in a noisy pub with six people who hadn't finished the book, who were more interested in their fish and chips.But this time... why had he even bothered? James Joyce? Really? Who starts a new book club by reading Roth, then Marquez, then Joyce? But he knew: a sad pseudo-intellectual girl who couldn't stop talking about the single year of a graduate program in literature she'd managed to complete."STOP TALKING ABOUT YOUR PROGRAM!" Joel shouted to the empty Prius. "YOU DIDN'T EVEN FUCKING FINISH, AND IT WAS AT NORTHERN!"He hadn't wanted to join the group. The name had been warning enough: Serious Readers of Oak Park. He didn't want to read something serious. He wanted to read... but no. He couldn't allow himself to think of It. A man, his shirt torn, a small gun in his hand. Already, revulsion was coiling in his stomach. He cast the memories aside, and focused on his anger."I mean really, who just DECLARES that everyone will have to read Moby Dick for June? Can we not VOTE??"He pounded the steering wheel, which meant the car threatened to go into a spin when he reflexively slammed on the brake. In the middle of the road, and just feet from his bumper, illuminated in the beam of a single working headlight, stood a woman. She was dressed strangely, in a skin-tight black suit, wearing a collar trimmed with white fur. Even in the dim light, Joel could see that was holding a book, a trade paperback."Joel," she said. He could hear her clearly over the silence of his engine, which had shut itself off dutifully when the car came to a stop. "I have been looking for you. I understand you are a special man, a man of discriminating taste."She held up the book. Even in the dim light, Joel could just make out the title. The Player of Games.The woman smiled. "Let's talk."ThreeDays later, and the man was still thinking about the book. He found it hard, in fact, to continue on with his reading of another interesting-sounding novel that was nevertheless utterly failing to grab his attention. "How can you make talking space dolphins dull?"While making dinner, he pondered the meaning of what he'd read, ignoring the insistent bleats from the two drones winding around his legs. There was that title: Use of Weapons. So many possible interpretations. There was the obvious answer, having to do with the different tools the protagonist ("Well, one of them..."), Zakalwe, used to accomplish the goals of his missions on behalf of the Culture. Then there was the way the Culture itself used Zakalwe, who had been recruited to the cause rather than born a citizen of the Machine-controlled utopian society, as a tool to impose its will upon the universe's "lesser" races.There were also subtler, perhaps more compelling interpretations as well. "Iain Banks really goes above and beyond what you would expect from the ghettoized stigma of the genre writer," the man mused. "It isn't just the thematic richness on display, but also the deft precision of his prose. Why, take the masterful twist ending, in which we learn AUGGGGH!"The man tripped over one of the squawking drones, the smaller one. It shone black and white in alternating blotches, indicating amusement.IIJoel stepped out of the sun and heat and into the full force blast of air conditioning. The weight of exams was finally off his shoulders. He had a full week before he had to head home and figure out what he was going to do with his summer. He needed something to read.He wanted the aisles, picking up titles from the display tables, looking for something long enough to last him several lazy, responsibility-free afternoons.Infinite Jest? No. Perhaps too long. Also, rather pretentious for a college student to be seen with that one, no? And anyway, he had a copy on his shelves at home, in the small bedroom where It had happened, all those years ago. Someday, maybe, he would go back and retrieve it. Not today, but still: no reason to spend the money.His eye fell upon a promising-looking paperback, perched on an endcap. The cartoon cover called out to him: The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier and Clay. He picked it up, glanced at the back. "Comics... sounds fun. Won the Pulitzer? Cool."His eyes wandered to the rest of the display. He gasped and stumbled backwards, dropping the book. "LITERARY/GENRE CROSSOVERS!" proclaimed the banner, but that wasn't what had filled him with fear. It was the small list of words below it: Fantasy, Horror, Graphic Novels, and... Sci-Fi."Sci-fi! No! No, it's too soon! I can't! I thought I could but..."Joel ran from the store, pushed out again into the sweltering Chicago sunshine.A clerk walked by, glared at the discarded book with annoyance."Customers," she grumbled. The roll of her eyes was almost audible.FourThe man settled into a warm bath, moving gingerly in deference to his sore muscles, his knee bruised where he had banged it against the kitchen cabinet. "Fucking drones." As he let the heat wash over him, leeching the ache from his joints, he considered the fact that, in his experience, it was the presence of drones -- and all the other trappings of the Culture -- that he was really looking for in an Iain M. Banks novel. Even after three books, there was still something undeniably amusing about super-intelligent machines that nevertheless had snippy, all-too-human personalities. It was also funny how they were constantly making fun of their flesh-and-blood counterparts in the Culture. Obviously the drones (and the Machine Mind overlords that control the Culture) didn't really need humans. They just... allowed them to stick around, because the Culture, what, found them amusing?Clearly, judging by a few brutal action sequences, it would take a single drone only a few minutes to disable even the best human fighter. "Knife missiles. Good thing that orange one doesn't have any knife missiles."IA silent hallway. Three doors, one closed. A man paced nervously, rubbing his temples. He started as the door nearest him began to open. A tired-looking woman emerged, closing the door silently behind her. "How is he doing?" the man asked."I don't know," the woman sighed. "He seems the same. He keeps muttering to himself and staring blankly into space. His mind just seems to be broken.""Let me go in," the man said. "I have to try."The woman looked at him with eyes empty of all but grief. "I don't know if it will do any good."Steeling himself, the man turned the shiny gold knob, letting himself into the room. It was dim, the only light entering through cracks at the edges of a heavily curtained window. The air stank of regret.The man looked down at his son, folded into a ball on the bed. He hadn't moved since they'd found him that way, clenched and shivering, a day before. Doctors had been called, but the roads were still impassable."Joel?" he whispered. "Joel, I'm here." Already, he was choking back a sob rising in his throat, threatening to escape. He sat down in a small chair by the bed, suddenly weary. "If only we knew what happened..." he muttered. "What were you doing that caused this?"Leaning forward to rest a palm against a small, clammy forehead, he felt his shoe brush against something heavy that had fallen, unnoticed, under the bed. He bent and picked it up. A book. A big book. He turned it around and peered at the cover, which featured a bare-chested hero holding a laser gun. "Battlefield Ear..."The man felt a strong jerk on his forearm. He almost dropped the book right into the lap of his son, who was now sitting up in the bed, ramrod straight, clutching his father's wrist so tightly his fingers were bone white."Don't! Don't!" the boy cried.FiveReally, he thought, all of the Culture novels had been variations on a theme: the merits of interventionist politics. What right do we have to intervene in the affairs of another culture? If we see wrong being done, must we correct it? Is it our place to say which side is even in the wrong? We like to think of ourselves as the good guys, but the answer is rarely as easy as the world would like us to think. Probably that was why Iain M. Banks' novels were fascinating but hardly ever as fun as he wanted them to be. These are dark books, with weighty themes.But, the action sequences. But, the wholly creative worlds and worldview. But, the mouthy robots.Yes. But. But, how many more variations on a theme could there be? The man sighed. Lost in his thoughts, he didn't notice the small drone, still radiating black and white, flashing toward him, twin multi-bladed knife missiles extended.Epilogue"Wow, are we landing already?" Closing his book, the reader glanced at his wife, attempting to stretch her limbs in the cramped confines of her seat. After folding his tray table, he slid the novel into the seat pocket in front of him, scratched absently through his shirt at the raised scars that covered his back. "Yep, you were out like a light the entire trip."As the plane touched down, the cabin filled with activity, the sounds of passengers yanking their carry-on bags from under seats, turning on their cell phones to reconnect with the world on the ground.There was no activity in the seat to the reader's left. Even as the couple squeezed past him to retrieve their bags, the man remained motionless, his head lolling, his chin pressed to his chest. The woman regarded him quizzicaly as they moved down the aisle."Man, that guy must have taken something strong," he said. "He didn't budge. His seat belt was still on!""I noticed," the reader said. "Oh, I almost forgot -- here's your pillow. I... borrowed it while you were sleeping.""Oh, were you able to nap at all?""Nope. It was nice and quiet. I decided I'd finish my book instead."The reader smiled.Full of StarsPrologueAdam Palmer wandered the aisles of the bookstore. Or more accurately, what had once been a bookstore -- the shelves, where shelves had not been removed, replaced by gaping holes of gouged plaster, held only a meager supply, the tattered remnants of an "everything must go!" sale that had long gone. Adam, already discouraged after fighting through a teetering wall made up of dented copies of America By Heart and A Shore Thing, held out little hope for finding much better at his ultimate destination: the barran wasteland that had once been Sci-Fi/Fantasy.It was, indeed, not a pretty sight. He'd thought himself prepared; still, he stumbled as he rounded the Horror shelves, where a battered copy of a Dean Koontz Frankenstein novel lay, forlorn and forgotten. The shelves were in ruins. Asimov, Clarke, Brin, even Bova -- the first section was entirely bare. In the distance, he could make out crushed boxes that had once held various installments of The Wheel of Time; though lacking true substance, those empty, yet weighty volumes had been consumed by hungry readers seeking sustenance. Curiously, a whole shelf of Goodkind sat pristine and untouched, save for a single missing copy, clutched in the bony hand of a withering corpse. Curiously, there was no stench of decay. The books seemed to be calling to him, their bright covers promising... Adam turned quickly away.He rounded another corner and gasped. How could this be? There, in the tie-in section, an entire row of torn, but still readable Star Wars books. His joy quickly dissolved as he scanned the spines: A Truce at Bakura? Shadows of the Empire? Children of the Jedi. He grimaced. Not much. But it might be enough to last him to the next shuttered Borders. It was just a few miles... A soft laugh behind him. Adam jumped and whirled around, heart hammering, still holding something with a cover so creased he could barely make out the name: Kevin J. Anderson. There was a woman standing just a few feet away, dressed in a strange, skin-tight black suit, wearing a collar trimmed with white fur. She was holding a single thick novel, a trade paperback. "se of Weap" was all Adam could make out."Adam Palmer?" the woman said."Yes?""I have been looking for you. I understand you are a special man, a man of discriminating taste."Adam smirked. "Maybe. What's the point, these days? Unless you want to get an e-reader. Or... order online.""It is true," she agreed. "Still, I think I have something you'll be interested in. Where I come from, we have a... different way of doing things. But you'll have to trust me."She turned and began walking away. Adam caught another glimpse of the book in her hands. "A Culture Novel." Intrigued, he began to follow."Wait."The woman had stopped suddenly, turned."You'll need to leave that here," she said, taking the Star Wars book from Adam's hands. He gripped it for a moment, surrendered. "You won't be needing it."She smiled. "Let's see if we can't find you a proper science-fiction book."
Basic premise rundown: Tired of a lifetime of war and interference, former Special Circumstances agent Cheradenine Zakalwe is trying to retire and disappear off the grid -- but the Culture isn't done with him yet. So his handler Diziet Sma (and her dry, sarcastic drone companion) descend to pull him out of retirement for One Last Job: to similarly pull an old politician out of retirement and use him to quell a brewing war in the system.---(Sidebar: I like how the premise strangely reflects the book's very creation on a meta level, which is shown in the acknowledgments: "I blame Ken MacLeod for the whole thing. It was his idea to argue the old warrior out of retirement, and he suggested the fitness program, too." I didn't find out until after reading the book that it was one of the very first that Banks ever wrote, back in 1974 -- the first Culture novel wasn't published until 1987, and Use of Weapons in 1990 -- and so he essentially dusted off the novel itself and brought it back out of the cupboard.)---Review: Approaching the end of this book, I was prepared to give it 3 stars... but then the ending blew me away and boosted it an entire star rating. I won't spoil it, but suffice it to say that making it to the end is very, very worth it, although overall I preferred other Culture novels.This book cements Banks, in my mind, as one of the most innovative writers I'm currently reading. What I love about him is that he plays around with narrative techniques, format, and structure so much -- sometimes it doesn't quite work, and that's fine, but at least he's exhibiting a playfulness with form that prevents his writing from being dry and predictable. Whether it's epistolary transcripts, dual narrators, hopping perspective between universes, or -- in this case -- two narrative threads moving forward and backward in time: one following Zakalwe's present-day adventures, the other counting backwards through his history and origins. It's hard to describe this, but TV Tropes summarised it nicely: "The two main approaches to the ending is one story working forwards towards the events, and a second story working backwards to their meaning."I think I would've liked to know that element going in; to my shame, it took me quite a while to get into this book and understand what the hell was going on with the chapters. That very narrative experimentation also cripples the pace of the book somewhat, making it surprisingly sedate despite all the action -- all of the flashbacks and shifts away from the present-day arc make it slow down, depicting Zakalwe marinating in his guilt, trying to find some meaning in his life, taking a break from everything in order to (almost quite literally) stop and smell the roses.That said, those very flashbacks are a wonderful depiction of a soldier trying to escape the soldiering life despite that being the only thing he's good at -- especially aligned with the present-day arc and thus proof that his retirement obviously failed, because he's back in the saddle all over again. War is also one of the few things that makes him happy. The character arc of Zakalwe coming to terms with this fact about himself is pretty poignant; you don't want to think of him as unhinged, but when he takes mass death in such stride and approaches war like a delightful mathematical problem to be untangled, well... (I also liked the juxtaposition of poetry & war; Zakalwe tries to write poems, and he is terrible at it.) Use of Weapons is also another nice exploration of the Culture + Contact + Special Circumstances and their tendency to use people as unwitting pawns. One of my favourite throwaway quotes is from close to the end (not really a spoiler though): (view spoiler)[The man was a walking mess and there were still two bullets inside him, but he refused to accept any treatment until he'd seen this woman. Bizarre, Skaffen-Amtiskaw thought, using an extended field to block the path of a small insect as it felt and picked its way up the trunk of the tree. The insect changed direction, feelers waving. There was another type of insect further up the trunk, and Skaffen-Amtiskaw was trying to get them to meet, to see what would happen.Bizarre, and even — indeed — perverse. (hide spoiler)]
What do You think about Use Of Weapons (1992)?
Use of Weapons: A dark and brooding tale of warfare, manipulation and guiltOriginally posted at Fantasy LiteratureUse of Weapons (1990) is the third published novel in Banks’ Culture series, although it is actually a rewrite of a draft written much earlier that the author claims “was impossible to comprehend without thinking in six dimensions.” Well, for readers who generally dwell in just three or four dimensions, the narrative structure of Use of Weapons is fairly complex until you get used to it.The story has two narrative tracks, one set in the present and moving forward in time (Chapter 1, 2, 3, etc), and a second track set in the past and moving backwards in time (VIII, VII, VI, etc). Both tracks focus on Cheradenine Zakalwe, a man skilled in warfare and military tactics who is recruited by a Culture agent from Special Circumstances, Diziet Sma, to be a military operative in various non-Culture societies and conflicts.For readers of the previous CULTURE novels Consider Phlebas (1987) and The Player of Games (1988), the Culture’s clandestine interference in the affairs of various societies and worlds is familiar. As a post-scarcity utopian society run by super-intelligent AIs, the Culture sees its mission as trying to improve the lot of less developed societies. However, it generally pursues this goal behind the scenes, choosing to manipulate different political groups and movements, but with the eventual goal of encouraging more peaceful and democratic societies.However, and this is a big caveat, the means that the Culture employs are often underhanded, deceitful, and involve the use of various pawns to achieve ends often too complex for humans to understand. This is where the novel’s title comes into play, since Use of Weapons refers to so many things in the story, whether it is the use of actual weapons in conflicts, the use of operatives to achieve the Culture’s cryptic ends, or in the case of the novel’s central characters, the use of loved ones to achieve tactical victories.Use of Weapons makes good use of its dual-track narrative structure to slowly explore the diverging character arcs of Zakalwe. The forward track follows Zakalwe as he is recruited out of retirement by Diziet Sma for “one last mission,” that old chestnut, to infiltrate a moderately-developed society and extract a former political player, Tsoldrin Beychae, who has retreated from society into solitary study. The professed goal of the mission is to reinvolve Beychae in a brewing political battle between pro- and anti-terraforming groups. The Culture wants the former group to prevail with the help of Beychae. Sma sets up Zakalwe with unlimited funds to establish an identity as a mysterious and wealthy individual called Staberinde.The forward narrative shows us Zakalwe’s various stratagems and setbacks in trying to achieve the Culture’s missions, and it becomes clear that although he is very proficient in his job, he also harbors some deep-seated doubts about the merits of the Culture’s interference. This puts the readers in a conundrum, because Zakalwe has a very jaded attitude towards his mission, even as he battles assassination attempts and kidnappings etc. This basically serves to distance the reader from the events of the story, because if Zakalwe hardly cares about the outcome, then why should we? It is exactly this ambivalence about the Culture’s motives that differentiates Banks’ novels from traditional space opera with clear heroes and villains. While this certainly appeals to a small but devoted fanbase that revels in moral ambiguity and questioning of one culture’s right to interfere with another, it also makes it hard to root for the protagonist. The same criticism applies to Consider Phlebas, in which the protagonist is actually an agent of the Idirans fighting against the Culture.Meanwhile, I found the backward narrative track more interesting, partly because it is unusual and disorienting to slowly trace Zakalwe’s character arc into his past. We are first shown repeated attempts by Zakalwe to settle down and live a peaceful life away from his warlike past, but these invariably fail, and as we delve further back, we see him involved in various military operations for the Culture, backing one side or the other, but always with the same sense of skepticism and detachment. Again, Banks seems determined to not let readers fall into that blissful dream-momentum that space opera affords.Midway through the backward-moving story arc, we discover that Zakalwe was the scion to an important aristocratic family, and grew up with two sisters, Livueta and Darckense, and was later joined by a cousin, Elethiomel, with whom he has many conflicts as a rival, which are exacerbated when Elethiomel has an affair with his sister Darckense. Eventually Elethiomel betrays his adopted family to seize power, and he and Zakalwe find themselves on opposite sides of a bloody struggle for control. Although they are both brilliant military strategists, Elethiomel is the more ruthless of the two, and as we get closer to the end of the book, we discover he has made the ultimate Use of Weapons to defeat his rival.A surprise twist actually follows right after the big reveal (don’t worry, I wouldn’t think of spoiling it!), and throws our entire understanding of Zakalwe’s character upside-down. It’s a pretty impressive trick, and even after thinking it through, the ramifications are profound for the entire story. Hats off to Banks for pulling the rug out so skillfully.Use of Weapons is a meditation on war, guilt, redemption, cruelty and the moral ambiguity of the Culture’s meddling in the affairs of less advanced civilizations. For many readers this is one of the best CULTURE novels, but although I give full marks for the eloquent writing and complex structure, it would be hard to say that I enjoyed the book. It’s consistently dark tone was only occasionally broken up by the comic relief of the sarcastic drone Skaffen-Amtiskaw.In retrospect, it is certainly a book that demands and rewards the reader’s close attention, but after reading it I feel a strong need for something lighter, and preferably a conventional forward-moving narrative. But I am glad that Banks was willing to produce intelligent work in the SF medium and prove that speculative fiction can indeed be literate, philosophical, and emotionally challenging.I listened to the audiobook narrated by Peter Kenny, and he does a good job with this and all of the other Culture novels I've read. He understands the tone of this future universe and is consistent and versatile with various voices.
—Stuart
Use of Weapons was the August 2008 pick for my sci-fi book club, and I enjoyed it immensely. It's a dense and challenging book to get through. The scattered timeline and the dreamlike quality of many passages put off some readers. Frustratingly, Banks leaves out what would have been the most revealing and emotionally fraught scenes. He provides us only with beginnings and middles, always cutting to black right after the climax, never giving us a resolution. But all of those apparent flaws are deliberate literary techniques, and I think that Banks uses them to great effect. In my reading, Use of Weapons is a meditation on situational ethics, their use, and their cost. The book's title refers both to the way in which the main character, Cheradinine Zakalwe, ruthlessly uses every available weapon to win his wars, and to the way in which the Culture uses Zakalwe himself. As a weapon, Zakalwe will destroy whatever he is aimed at and he has no apparent morality beyond the morality of the purpose to which he is set. But he is haunted my memories of some unforgivable act which, at the time, he thought was necessary. Zakalwe works for the Culture in order to redeem himself, fighting wars that will supposedly make the universe a better place. The Culture is an ancient, interstellar civilization that is governed by computers. They attempt to guide the fate of less developed societies in order to make them "more civilized", but the connection between Zakalwe's actions and the Culture's goals is never explored. Likewise, the reader is never given any sense of the goal which drove Zakalwe to commit his great crime. All of the action in the book is a means to an end that is never specified. We are left wondering whether any end could be good enough to justify Zakalwe's actions-- or whether he is truly beyond redemption.The novel's central dilemma is thus a paradox: if the reader believes that the end justifies the means, then nothing Zakalwe did in pursuit of a moral goal could be immoral and, thus, he does not require redemption. But if the end does not justify the means, then Zakalwe can never be redeemed by fighting the Culture's wars.I thought this was a thought-provoking and beautifully written book, but it's definitely not for everyone. I'd recommend it to anyone who has the patience to read it.
—Anne
I have been wondering how to write a review for this book. I am still at a loss how to describe it, so I'll just mumble on.The book continues the story of The Culture, but to be honest I read the other books so long ago, I have very little memory of the story. I find Ian Banks books very much like that. I read then i forget. We have a story here in two parts, one going forwards from chapters 1 to 10 and one going backwards from chapter X to I. Which can make it confusing, because both stories are about our protagonist Zakalwe, who is an agent of the The Culture used to stop major wars by starting smaller ones (kind of like back burning eh?)The confusion starts when the you are reading the two stories at the same time, because at some time im his past, Zakalwe has a similar experience to the one he is having right now, so you are not sure, which part of the story.... confused? This isn't the first time Banks has written like this.Apart from that, the story is actually quite interesting. There is a major concern with a huge galatic war that needs to be put down, the job of The Hidden Culture, with their main assassin/warlord Zak. At the same time we run a story about how Zak became who he is. Going back to his youth. right from the start you see that he has some serious psychological issues concerning his sister and that story is slowly dragged out of him as the story progresses. So what I liked about this story the most was the humour. At times I literally laughed out loud with the funniness. Most of these moments occurred when a drone, whose name I can't remember and never was able to pronounce, was involved. His interaction with Zak and ship minds was just bloody hilarious. There are some bizarre moments in the story, Banks readers will recognise his style to suddenly throw in something completely out here, like a body part swapping orgy to keep you on your toes and have you checking the cover of the book to make sure you didn't pick up someone else's book on the train.The second half of the story goes very quick, I was struggling at about 25% but couldn't put it down once past 75%. If GR gave us half starts then this is a sold three and a half. It is NOT a 3 star, but I cant give it four either. Interesting read, but hard to discuss as we read.
—Lee
