Some interesting ideas in here, but generally I found the uninteresting stuff frequently drowned it out. I know this is the first 'M. Banks' novel, so I'm hoping he's just finding his voice. I'll probably go on and read more of the Culture novels at some point, hoping that this isn't particulary represetative. I find Banks quite uneven in his regular novels, so no real surprise if he were in his Sci-Fi novels.

Main complaints—too long! There was a lot of stuff that could have been excised. Some of the ideas in the plot digressions (particularly the Eaters, and the actual mechanics of the card game) seemed really immature compared with some of the other parts. I found it difficult to follow many of the action sequences—that may be my failing or M. Banks' (I might just have been trying to get through it too fast). The actual science bits seemed a bit arbitrary (relativistic time was kinda acknowledged but just swept under the carpet), but I guess that's not too unusual.

I enjoyed a lot of the ideas and philosophy of the Culture itself (the Idirans less so - they seemed a bit of trope of Space Opera-style sci-fi—though maybe less so when this was written). The secret agent stuff of Horza getting out of desparate scrapes was enjoyably James Bond-ish (though I would have happily sacrificed that if it were jettisoned with the other more sensationalist material). ( )

It's half sort of generic "space opera" and it has the bad aspects of that - there are multiple lengthy boring fight scenes where you get descriptions of everything each person does while fighting for 10 pages or whatever, there's a few sort of other generic sci-fi things - but also half not that, with serious consequences, serious emotional writing and characterisation, genuinely creative and interesting ideas which don't get bogged down in the sort of generic sci-fi "scaffolding". The Culture itself is interesting, the Idrians are interesting, there's a genuine sense of wonder inspired by the descriptions of a lot of the stuff. There's a section about a cult on an island on an orbital which is really creepy but imaginative.

The emotional writing is really good and the book has a LOT of really sad and horrible moments. It kind of underscores the tragedy of war and the sort of meaninglessness of it all but it's pretty depressing, heh.

Ending spoilers: that ending is a massive punch in the gut. i guess i wasn't expecting a happy ending but that's a very grim one. everyone dies, the thing everyone was searching for gets disabled accidentally and it doesn't really matter. i guess in a way it's a good ending for someone who i assume is a pacifist and was presumably trying to illustrate the futility of the war. but it still hurt. i don't know. The epilogue makes it even worse. there's something about "someone does something they think is important, fails at the end, then turns out nothing they did would ever have mattered and their achievements and existence are destroyed so much not even dust of it remains" that's unbelievably depressing and horrible to read

I will say he's incredibly good at wrapping up all the loose ends, which is highly unusual in a science fiction writer. Pretty much everything I could think of and some stuff I didn't realise happened got explained. ( )