by Iain M. Banks
This is spectacular. It deals with huge, terrible themes (war, loss, revenge, suicide, suicide bombings) and philosophical questions (exile, redemption, forgiveness), in multiple storylines spread across hundreds of years. The scope is HUGE. There are three things that came out of Banks's mind I des...
heavy, heavy themes done with a light and benevolent touch. the topics on display include suicide and suicide bombings, terrorism, genocide, imperialism/cultural colonialism, the nature of war, the afterlife... and feature a loveable cast of pretentious robot drones, adorable and often furry alien c...
I'd recommend Look To Windward, but it wasn't my favorite Banks' book so far. (That's probably Inversions). It took a while to get going, and there were a few too many jumps in time/perspective which I thought detracted a bit from the momentum of the narrative. However, once the reader (finally) fig...
I didn't find the resolution to be at all satisfying, but I think that was part of the point. It's really nice to see thinly veiled political commentary also manage to be beautiful and entertaining and try to represent a complex issue as complex.
This is a book about mourning and regret, set in the universe of Banks's Culture series. There are several interwoven subplots, two of which display remarkable technical virtuosity. The first is a moving love story between completely non-human extraterrestrial creatures; I think it's the only succes...
Look to Windward is the seventh book in Banks' science fiction universe based on a utopian society of advanced artificial intelligences and the humans (and other organic life forms) that originally created them, loosely termed the Culture. With each book, Banks has built his plots out of the interst...
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