This book came with a lot of hype. But it was a little bit of a slog for me.
The author paints a broad picture of a sprawling post-human universe teaming with civilisations of all levels, from stick-sharpening alieneanderthals to Elder Gods guarding whole systems.
While the world – building is expansive, it’s not very deep. Banks offers glimpses of what an average citizen of the Culture believes or behaves like. But you don’t really end up knowing any of the characters’ backgrounds to a satisfactory level of detail.
The motivations of the belligerents in the war could have been explored earlier in the book. I feel like the full explanation was only offered well toward the end, when I had zoned out a bit and was just trying to finish the book.
Some things don’t make sense. Spoiler warning. One of the characters who is a machine openly expresses disgust at the protagonist for being a speciesist. But for some reason, the protagonist’s death and love for his romantic interest suddenly makes the machine respect him enough to name an entire spaceship after him.
The last few chapters were an uphill climb. The author goes into sudden bouts of excruciating detail. A lot of missing the trees for the forest going on.
TLDR: Good concepts. Execution could’ve been better.
by quiescent_haymaker