Possibly his best culture story so far

Great story with all the culture twists you would expect leaving you in awe with the scale of dimension and time

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...never ceases to surprise

The most entertaining culture novel so far. Nicely performed, wonderfully written, space-candy and alien drama.

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Another fantastic Culture book

Amazing universe, excellent premesis, wonderful characters, dry wit - this installment is everything you want from Banks.

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A masterpiece from one of sci fi's greatest Minds

This story is tapestry of grand scope and scale masterfully woven together by a mind brilliant enough that He might as well be a GSV in disguise

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Slow and anticlimactic

I really liked Consider Phlebas and Player of Games which I’ve read previously but I never really got in to this. The plot moves really slow and is weighed down by too much conversation (even if it’s often quite funny).

Also I had such a hard time with identifying with—or even give physical form in my mind to—three-legged alien species! Especially hard in erotic scenes... How does a tiger-centaur slide up on her partner for sex when he is on his back? This might seem like a small problem, but it kept throwing me off the story.

The reading/“voice-acting” is excellent however!

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A Good Story & Worthwhile Listen

The Short:

If you like Banks, you’ll like this novel. It is a more solid bet than many others in the series, and it’s pretty much certain you’ll enjoy it, if not love it.

If you have yet to read any Banks, it could be a good place to start (maybe better than the first novel in the series, which is much more space-opera than the others).

_. ._
The Long:

3 stars might seem harsh, especially when matched with “worthwhile listen,” so let me start by saying that, having listened to about 5 novels in the Culture series, so far, I haven’t been blown away as so many other listeners seem to have been.

I’m a big fan of Sci Fi, but have yet to connect with the elements that so many are quick to label as “genius” in Banks’ work. That’s not to say that I don’t think they might be there: I would certainly consider re-listening to a few of the books, for a second look. It’s very possible that the subtlety requires greater attention than what I give the story, when listening to it (i.e. it might be that, in my case, the stories would be more revealing if read, rather than listened to).

That being said, besides a few interesting ideas and a little forays into some disjointed world-building, I just didn’t find very much in this particular story. I *enjoyed* it, but find that Banks relies a lot on a quasi-vacuous form (here I mean vacuous in the technical sense, not in the colloquial sense): he leaves out a lot of the story for the reader to fill-in. This isn’t done artlessly - to some extent it contributes to the interest of the story, and maintains interest; however, it also feels very much like a Dalian curtain winding it’s way up & down, back & forth and at odd-angles to hide the deus (dei?) ex machina that breathes life into his novels.

Personally, I am neither for nor against the use of “deus ex machina” - it can be used to great effect (as it is in the BBC’s Sherlock series), and it can be just be cheap and lazy (see all truly mediocre Sci Fi !); however, in Banks’ case, it feels misplaced. The volume of information and details not explicitly provided makes it feel as though Banks himself was aware of this mis-fit of the narrative tool, and so tried to minimize it’s presence.

If all this crap about narrative techniques annoys you, let me say that I’m (normally) with you on that front - literary analysis has its limits. More than anything, the above is simply an attempt to understand why it feels as though there was perhaps 5-8h of story missing from this novel. In plain language, that is really what it felt like: some interesting ideas, some great characters, but a few parts that just don’t fit together, and it seems as though the author knew it, as well.

Overall:
Not a waste of time or money. Definitely entertaining. Not genre-defining Sci Fi, nothing to blow your mind. A safe bet for entertaining listening.

I hope this was helpful to you in deciding whether or not to purchase the book. Please take a moment to click on the button, if it was, so i can continue to provide helpful reviews. Happy listening!

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Ok, but format is not for me

I personally dislike stories written fragmented in time and space, it takes me a while to figure out what is happening to who and where and is just overall confusing.

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