471 pages
English language
Published Nov. 13, 2005
The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.
Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.
This is the second Banks I’ve read and I thought they were both terrific. Unlike some epic, galaxy-spanning space operas, this was pacey, smoothly written with great characters and loads of action and adventure.
Content warning Mild spoilers
I appreciate the basic concept of the book to show the effects of a big war on various situations, how people get dragged into it (or worse) against their will. It also shows the costs. The appendix that lists the facts about the war of which the book only covers the beginning is quite sobering. This was my second time reading it and it sure reads differently now in the light of a very real war raging nearby.
Banks introduces a lot of quite imaginative concepts in this book. The Culture, their Minds, huge ships with funny names, Orbitals, Megaships, Damage, a bunker system with huge trains and formidable weapons of various kinds. Almost all of the episodes in the book kould be their own book. The main problem is that the protagonist we keep following around isn't very sympathetic. On the contrary. Same goes for the rest of the pirates we spend most of the book with. So, it's difficult to be invested in what happens to them. This isn't helped by them dying in stupid ways almost immediately. That does get a bit repetitive after a while. The final showdown in the bunker system was very captivating the second time around, too. The way gender is depicted in this book isn't very progressive, weirdly enough. It's a solid, somewhat traditional sci-fi book.
I remember seeing this in a book shop with a shiny silver highlight on the cover, and recognisng the name of the author of "The Wasp Factory", which I had read and really enjoyed. But what was he doing in the SF section, and what was the "M" all about? I guessed correctly that here was an author living a double life in so-called literature AND my home base of genre fiction, especially SF. And I found his SF was far superior to his realistic fiction or whatever you call that rubbish :-).
On early readings I didn't quite absorb the brilliant creation of Banks' future utopia the Culture, partly because this first novel highlights a character who has turned against this pan-galactic anarchist society, and worked for a religious extremist society sworn to destroy it. It's like Banks wanted to stress-test his perfect society by portraying one of its …
I remember seeing this in a book shop with a shiny silver highlight on the cover, and recognisng the name of the author of "The Wasp Factory", which I had read and really enjoyed. But what was he doing in the SF section, and what was the "M" all about? I guessed correctly that here was an author living a double life in so-called literature AND my home base of genre fiction, especially SF. And I found his SF was far superior to his realistic fiction or whatever you call that rubbish :-).
On early readings I didn't quite absorb the brilliant creation of Banks' future utopia the Culture, partly because this first novel highlights a character who has turned against this pan-galactic anarchist society, and worked for a religious extremist society sworn to destroy it. It's like Banks wanted to stress-test his perfect society by portraying one of its apostates first up.
Anyway, it's a great book, as the horrible Idirans and the Culture operatives race to rescue a stranded "mind" one of the super-powerful artificial intelligences which are at the core of the Culture.
