Use of Weapons
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Narrated by:
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Peter Kenny
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By:
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Iain M. Banks
About this listen
The man known as Cheradenine Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances' foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks, and military action.
The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him toward his present eminence, but despite all their dealings she did not know him as well as she thought.
The drone known as Skaffen-Amtiskaw knew both of these people. It had once saved the woman's life by massacring her attackers in a particularly bloody manner. It believed the man to be a lost cause. But not even its machine could see the horrors in his past.
Ferociously intelligent, both witty and horrific, Use of Weapons is a masterpiece of science fiction.
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Mankind was beginning its third leap into the Galaxy, but Old Earth had so long kept to herself that her people were unable to travel safely among the rough-and-tumble cultures that had evolved on distant worlds. That annoyed Earth's rulers, for Hobart Floyt--a minor Terran bureaucrat-- had been left a mysterious inheritance by the deceased ruler of a small but wealthy interstellar empire.
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Best Sci Fi Fun anywhere!
- By A. Foxter on 07-07-15
By: Brian Daley
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Stormbreaker
- The First Alex Rider Adventure
- By: Anthony Horowitz
- Narrated by: Nathaniel Parker
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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They said his uncle Ian died in a car accident. Alex Rider knows that's a lie, and the bullet holes in his uncle's car confirm the truth. But nothing can prepare him for the news that the uncle he always thought he knew was really a spy for Britain's top-secret intelligence agency. Enlisted to find his uncle's killers and complete Ian's final mission, Alex suddenly finds himself caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse, with no way out.
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Okay action story held up by an great narrator
- By Mary Fan on 08-13-13
By: Anthony Horowitz
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The Forge of God
- By: Greg Bear
- Narrated by: Stephen Bel Davies
- Length: 16 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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On September 28th, a geologist working in Death Valley finds a mysterious new cinder cone in very well-mapped area. On October 1, the government of Australia announces the discovery of an enormous granite mountain. Like the cinder cone, it wasn't there six months ago.
Something is happening to planet Earth, and the truth is too terrifying to contemplate
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Great Story, Wonderful Listening, But the Editor?
- By George Knight on 07-14-13
By: Greg Bear
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Void Star
- By: Zachary Mason
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Tristan Morris, Sean Pratt, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Not far in the future, the seas have risen, and the central latitudes are emptying. But it's still a good time to be rich in San Francisco, where weapons drones patrol the skies to keep out the multitudinous poor.
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if you're That Guy
- By Zachary on 06-18-17
By: Zachary Mason
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Dead Man's Land
- By: Robert Ryan
- Narrated by: Richard Burnip
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Deep in the trenches of Flanders Fields, men are dying in the thousands every day. So one more death shouldn't be a surprise. But then a body turns up with bizarre injuries, and Sherlock Holmes' former sidekick, Dr. John Watson - unable to fight for his country due to injury but able to serve it through his medical expertise - finds his suspicions raised.
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Watson is wonderful, amid very grim surroundings
- By L. Gutman on 03-01-18
By: Robert Ryan
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The Ninth Rain
- The Winnowing Flame Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Jen Williams
- Narrated by: Jot Davies
- Length: 20 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Jen Williams, acclaimed author of The Copper Cat trilogy, featuring The Copper Promise, The Iron Ghost and The Silver Tide, returns with the first in a blistering new trilogy. The great city of Ebora once glittered with gold. Now its streets are stalked by wolves. Tormalin the Oathless has no taste for sitting around waiting to die while the realm of his storied ancestors falls to pieces - talk about a guilt trip. Better to be amongst the living, where there are taverns full of women and wine.
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Couldn’t put it down!
- By Renae on 09-09-22
By: Jen Williams
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Gravity's Rainbow
- By: Thomas Pynchon, Frank Miller - cover design
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 37 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.
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"Time to touch the person next to you"
- By Jefferson on 07-04-16
By: Thomas Pynchon, and others
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InterWorld
- By: Neil Gaiman, Michael Reaves
- Narrated by: Christopher Evan Welch
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Joey Harker isn't a hero. In fact, he's the kind of guy who gets lost in his own house. But then one day, Joey gets really lost. He walks straight out of his world and into another dimension. Joey's walk between the worlds makes him prey to two terrible forces: armies of magic and science who will do anything to harness his power to travel between dimensions.
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A good listen
- By Gurmukh on 10-31-07
By: Neil Gaiman, and others
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TimeRiders
- By: Alex Scarrow
- Narrated by: Aaron Landon
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Maddy should have died in a plane crash. Liam should have died at sea when the Titanic sank. Sal should have died in a tragic fire. But a mysterious man whisked them away to safety. Maddy, Liam, and Sal quickly learn that time travel is no longer just a hope for the future; it is a dangerous reality. And they weren't just rescued from their terrible fates…they were recruited for the agency of TimeRiders created to protect the world from those seeking to alter the course of history for personal gain.
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Rather mundane story, not very scifi
- By DoctorMu on 01-24-16
By: Alex Scarrow
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Surprisingly meh
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There is a world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse. Such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organization with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers?
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Finally an Iain M. Banks book on audible...
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In a world renowned even within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a war. For one brother it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one - maybe two - people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, even without knowing the full truth, it means returning to a place she'd thought abandoned forever.
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Don't Buy this Abominable Abridgement
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When a repairman accidentally discovers a parallel universe, everyone sees it as an opportunity, whether as a way to ease Earth’s overcrowding, set up a personal kingdom, or hide an inconvenient mistress. But when a civilization is found already living there, the people on this side of the crack are sent scrambling to discover their motives. Will these parallel humans come in peace? Or are they just as corrupt and ill-intentioned as the people of this world?
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Relevant reading for 2020
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A man lies in a coma after a near-fatal accident. His body broken, his memory vanished, he finds himself in the surreal world of the bridge - a world free of the usual constraints of time and space, a world where dream and fantasy, past and future, fuse. Who is this man? Where is he? Is he more dead than alive? Or has he never been so alive before?
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Sci-fi fans might skip, but it’s fantastic and well crafted
- By Moore Creative on 07-25-18
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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....
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Visionary but half-cooked intro to Culture 'verse
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It is 4034 AD. Humanity has made it to the stars. Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year.
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Surprisingly meh
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There is a world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse. Such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organization with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers?
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Don't Buy this Abominable Abridgement
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Relevant reading for 2020
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A man lies in a coma after a near-fatal accident. His body broken, his memory vanished, he finds himself in the surreal world of the bridge - a world free of the usual constraints of time and space, a world where dream and fantasy, past and future, fuse. Who is this man? Where is he? Is he more dead than alive? Or has he never been so alive before?
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Sci-fi fans might skip, but it’s fantastic and well crafted
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By Iain Banks, not Iain M. Banks
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A classic.
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The good news is that you have just awakened into Eternal Life. You are going to live forever. Immortality is a reality. A medical miracle? Not exactly. The bad news is that you are a scrap of electronic code. The world you see around you, the you that is seeing it, has been digitized, scanned, and downloaded into a virtual reality program. You are a Copy that knows it is a copy. The good news is that there is a way out.
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Amazing book. Amazingly bad narrator.
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Sundiver
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For nearly a billion years, every known sentient species in the universe has been the result of genetic and cultural guidance - or "uplifting" - by a previously uplifted patron race. Then humans are discovered. Having already uplifted chimps and dolphins, humanity clearly qualifies as an intelligent species, but did they actually evolve their own intelligence, or did some mysterious patron race begin the process, then suddenly abandon Earth?
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good, but flawed
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Gothic Horror Hard Science Fiction
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Hardest of hard SF...
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The very far future: The galaxy is a drifting wreck of black holes, neutron stars, and chill white dwarfs. The age of star formation is long past. Yet there is life here, feeding off the energies of the stellar remnants, and there is mind, a tremendous galaxy-spanning intelligence each of whose thoughts lasts a hundred thousand years. And this mind cradles memories of a long-gone age when a more compact universe was full of light... The 27th century: Proxima Centauri, an undistinguished red dwarf star, is the nearest star to our sun. How would it be to live on such a world?
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No Sense of Conclusion
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Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself. With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. But as he closes in on the secret, a killer closes in on him because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason.
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Defeated
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In a cave high in the Alps, a renegade anthropologist discovers a frozen Neanderthal couple with a Homo sapiens baby. Meanwhile, in southern Russia, the U.N. investigation of a mysterious mass grave is cut short. One of the investigators, molecular biologist Kaye Lang, returns home to the U.S. to learn that her theory on human retroviruses has been verified with the discovery of SHEVA, a virus that has slept in our DNA for millions of years and is now waking up.
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A huge let-down
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Perhaps it wasn't from our time, perhaps it wasn't even from our universe, but the arrival of the 300-kilometer long stone was the answer to humanity's desperate plea to end the threat of nuclear war. Inside the deep recesses of the stone lies Thistledown: the remnants of a human society, versed in English, Russian and Chinese. The artifacts of this familiar people foretell a great Death caused by the ravages of war, but the government and scientists are unable to decide how to use this knowledge.
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Am Epic Original SciFi Read Worth Your Time...
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The Forge of God
- By: Greg Bear
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On September 28th, a geologist working in Death Valley finds a mysterious new cinder cone in very well-mapped area. On October 1, the government of Australia announces the discovery of an enormous granite mountain. Like the cinder cone, it wasn't there six months ago.
Something is happening to planet Earth, and the truth is too terrifying to contemplate
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Great Story, Wonderful Listening, But the Editor?
- By George Knight on 07-14-13
By: Greg Bear
What listeners say about Use of Weapons
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Darden H.
- 04-04-23
LISTEN TO THIS BOOK TWICE!
The way this story unfolds offers a totally unique and brilliant experience that really blew me away. There are many moments where the story feels disjointed, or that you missed an important piece of information early on that's being referenced as background knowledge. towards the final quarter of the story though, things really start to click into place as more information is revealed. The end brings everything together, and will rock you.
If you immediately start the book over again, scenes that worked in a metaphorical sense initially will take on new and more in depth meanings. I fully believe the author intended the readers to read the book again after finishing it the first time- It offers an entirely new, beautifully deep experience once you start with the whole picture already revealed.
The fact that the author was even able to come up with such a complex narrative concept, and to employ it with such skill and emotional depth absolutely boggles my mind. What an incredible experience, and please, PLEASE finish it twice!
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- Michael Lyons
- 09-23-17
Best Culture novel I’ve read yet.
This is the fourth Culture novel I’ve listened to and is now my favorite. The order I read the books so far have been ‘A Player of Games’, ‘Consider phlebas’, ‘Surface Detail’ and now ‘Use of weapons’. This book is truly unique compared to the others I have read in the way that the characters are developed and in Peter Kenney’s excellent performance. I highly recommend this book but only for folks that have read atleast one Culture novel previously so that you are familiar with GSVs, SC, etc.
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- Andrew D Bauer
- 05-18-21
Interesting
Fascinating storyline. Uniquely told. Amazing culmination with a very unexpected plot twist. Makes you think
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- Alan Meigs
- 04-28-21
Wow, rough start, then eventually wow.
I look forward to reading it again to reassess my opinion but right now it is amongst the best I've read.
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- Anonymous User
- 06-27-17
Awesome but might be better read than listened to
Due to the complexity of this book and the style of jumping around it may be better to read than listen. In saying that it was wonderful and the Peter Kenny's reading was excellent.
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- Mitchel
- 11-21-19
One of the greats
I have listened to this three times now. It is a beautiful, devastating story. Peter Kenny is by far my favorite narrator for Iain m banks. Highly recommended, although probably not the best book to introduce you to the culture novels.
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- Joshua Bremer
- 09-26-23
Requires full concentration throughout
Good story, but not a fan of the dueling timelines every other chapter. Because it tells two different stories in different time periods, it requires complete focus to fully understand everything when it ends. Least favorite book in the series and I will now be taking a break from it. Unlike the previous books, you can’t listen to this one while doing other things if you expect to grasp the story.
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- SciFi Kindle
- 05-16-13
Amazing Character Portrait
After over twenty years, this still holds up as a Sci-Fi masterpiece character study into the dark soul of its protagonist, a mercenary named Cheradenine Zakalwe. At first, the unusual story structure of two asynchronous story lines, alternating between the present and an episodic sequence of thirteen key moments in Zakalwe's past (revealed in reverse chronological order), can be confusing. However, it quickly clarifies, and is an absolutely ingenious way of examining the roots of the character's motives, phobias, and mannerisms in such a way that maximum surprise is extracted at each 'reveal'. Of course, as you've guessed from the profession of Mr. Zakalwe, there is no shortage of action throughout, and a good deal of James Bond 007 (I'm picturing Daniel Craig, not the other blokes). The biggest lost opportunity here was to explore, in the book's many settings and locales, some truly alien cultures, philosophies, and biologies, but sadly we see only a large collection of human civilizations in various stages of technological development. At least Gene Roddenberry slapped some prosthetic facial adornments on his humanoid aliens! Nevertheless, the story succeeds in elevating character over deus ex machina; no easy feat considering the persistent omnipotence of the Culture standing behind the mercenary, but here kept at a welcome arm's length, maintaining a high-stakes identification between the reader and the protagonist.
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- Dan B
- 08-03-20
Not quite as good as Banks' other Culture novels
This was an entertaining story and I just love Bank's presentation of the Culture. So, needless to say, this is a great story in that tradition. However, I haven't read a huge number of the Culture novels (I think just "Player of Games" and "Consider Phlebas"), and "Use of Weapons" didn't seem quite up to those.
It felt like it only really colored in the characterization of the main character, Zakalwe. In fact, you could say the entire book was essentially devoted to fleshing out his character. Diziet's character is really only there as a foil or straight-person for Zakalwe, and Skaffen-Amtiskaw gets even less book time. Several other characters are portrayed as seen through his eyes, but he is the only full character.
Unfortunately, I didn't really enjoy his character a lot, and I felt like the great reveal at the end was heavily and obviously foreshadowed, if not in the specific details, certainly in outlines of what happened. Add into that the narrative structure choice of interleaving two storylines, one proceeding forward in time and one proceeding backward in time, and I struggled to enjoy the plotline.
The narration by Peter Kenny was excellent, he brings the perfect tone to the Culture series!
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- ZenDada
- 09-04-16
Never for a second guessed this was coming!
The story of a man - an assassin, really - but a man who wanted to do the right thing. Died a lot. Had a lot of amnesia. Struggled to remember.
Had a phobia of chairs. Small white chairs.
I never saw the ending coming. I'm in tears. I'll read this again in print. And cry again.
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