Has anyone else picked up the latest in the Culture series? I just finished reading it and I have to say I wasn’t too taken by it.
Somewhere between the space-opera melodrama and the whole medieval-level society intrigue, it didn’t feel like too coherent a story; although I did enjoy the twist in the end where the uncovered being turns out to be one of the Iln, and the resulting battle. Banks’ everyone-dies-in-the-end approach, however, first seen in Consider Phlebas, felt a little formulaic. I was very pleased that one of my favourite characters (Choubris Holse) survived and was set up for life at the end.
Overall, I liked the book, although not as much as *Look to Windward *or Excession. I just feel Banks’ strength is very much in harder sci-fi, and that in this case the long and convoluted story involving a much lower-technology setting doesn’t do justice to his talent. His intricate, convoluted storytelling style, with its constant flashbacks and changes of perspective, helped keep the pace of what is quite a long book.
Incidentally, does anyone else feel that Banks’ names are made up for the sole purpose of being impossible to pronounce? 
The pronounceability of the names isn’t what bugs me (although I can see why it would), it’s the ridiculously self-indulgent proportions they’ve got to. When even minor characters have somewhere approaching 10 different names they might be referred to by, each laboriously explained within the context of a civilisation that has almost nothing concrete to do, it gets silly. And his penchant for describing people’s/aliens’ clothing/thorax-jewellery is getting almost Robert Jordanesque. I half-expected one of those anty type aliens to start crossing its secondary antennae beneath its mandibles. (Okay, it’s not really that bad.)
Anyway. The balance of the book was entirely off, I thought. And for me it’s not the focus on the low-tech society in itself (my favourite Culture novel is Inversions) but the inexplicable extent to which this dominated despite furnishing the actual story with little genuine drive. The Sursamen society wasn’t all that intrinsically interesting, and I didn’t think the way they were mentored was explored all that well. Then it was left to cram all the actual SF action into a short segment at the end, and while some of it was great, the fact that it was all in one concentrated chunk meant it just started washing over me, which seemed a bit of a waste. It was a fantastic climactic scene, but I couldn’t help feeling neither Anaplian nor Ferbin had been fleshed out enough to give it as much kick as it probably deserved.
Don’t get me wrong, there was a fair bit in this book to like, but Banks sure as hell needs a stronger editor. It was the same in The Algebraist, albeit to a lesser extent (and with a much stronger basic story). Maybe if I re-read it I’ll pick out the civilisation-mentoring theme more strongly, but the trouble is, if I’m honest I don’t feel much urge to re-read it at all. And it’s the first Culture novel I can say that about.
Thankfully, I got it out of the library. I read the first chapter, hated it, skipped to the end and put the book down. My wife nearly bought it for me, luckily she didin’t waste her money.
Possibly the worst thing he’s ever written, which is a shame, because I was really looking forward to a new culture novel. I really enjoyed all the others and was hoping for something better than this.
I don’t know about you, but I found the whole thing quite depressing. Let’s hope he improves for the next one.
I’ve read most of the Culture novels and I consider Banks to be in some ways one of the best true SF authors for many years(As opposed to space opera)with an incredible imagination,but what really Pees me off about his novels is the whole “Whats the point we’re all going to die one day anyway sort of thing”.
When I finish one of his books I tend to feel deflated,exciting story but none of the characters needed to have done anything really,it would still have turned out the same in the end.
It compares rather unfavourably for me to his other stuff - my favourites being Player of Games (which I consider one of the greatest SF stories of all time) and The Algebraist. I didn’t mind the low-tech steampunk civ (I like Inversions a lot), the multiple narratives, weird names or the flashbacks (c’mon, it’s Banks!) or the most-everyone-dies ending (again, it’s Banks) - and I’m so thoroughly immersed in Culture minutiae by now that I didn’t need filling-in on all the rest, and I liked the slow unfolding of the actual Shellworld setup.
No, what I didn’t like was the really rushed nature of the ending. I’m all for an action ending, but this one just felt kind of … overhasty, not to sound Entish about the whole thing. I felt a little cheated, which is not how I want to feel at the end of a book by one of my top 5 authors.
But I felt better when I chatted to a friend, who only found the epilogue a couple days after she’d read the main story, and was quietly fuming about the incomplete ending for all that time 
I thought it was okay, definitely not his best by a long shot, but I enjoyed it more than Consider Phlebas. I agree it was tortuously slow, I wanted to yell at the book to go faster, which is never a good sign.
Also, something that was never resolved was how Ferbin escaped from the factory at the beginning of the book after seeing his father killed. From the way it was described (he was looking at the drop to the ground below and suddenly he was there without feeling an impact) you’re initially led to believe there was a drone helping him or something, but it doesn’t appear to be the case at all from the way the book develops or ends, and it’s certainly never alluded to after that.
I wish I lived in the Culture 
Meh, very very meh.
It almost reads like he has written a computer script to generate his characters and plot lines based on past novels, with random descriptions of sci fi super wonder widjets thrown in. The thing that began to bug me in this book was the whole culture, contact special circumstances deal. Supposedly contact are a low key organisation, and SC are the elite of the elite, not to be messed with, almost unheard of, and supposedly do not exist. Yet everywhere our SC hero goes, practically everyone guesses who she works for and the SC thing is all very ho hum. Well just my impression.
I also just finished reading the Steep Approach to Garbdale, under his Iain Banks name. This was another rich scotish kid rejecting his fortune, incest and family scandle/murder, pointless minutea about the latest techno widget that doesn´t move the story along, a pointless political rant, that doesn´t move the story along, all resolved neatly with the kid ending up rich.
Unfortunatly I read these two books fairly close togeather and Banks has dropped way down my list of must read authors. He needs to get over whatever it is, he has about his cousin, and get back to focusing on his plot timing and figuring out what story it is he wants to tell.
Really, I had Consider Phlebus (along with Use of Weapons and Player of of Games) up there as one of his best novels. Probably because the whole culture thing seamed so new.
I read Garbadale at the same time as Matter and loved it! Clearly we’re tuned into different things in Bank’s writing. 
Well , I read Garbadale in one long day, I was imersed in it, but minor things started to irk me, it was cleary being set up for a big reveal about some sort of mother daughter father type thing. Then the whole end was resolved in about two chapters, half of which was a completly pointless political rant, and the opposing character could not have been any more a stereotypical bad guy if he had a black cape and twirled a long thin moustache and threatened to get you penelope pitstop. Now its not the politics of the issue, just that it was irrelavent to the story, as was the other character.
The story, as with Matter, had me turning pages, but the rushed endings in both really highighted some of the flaws in the story. That and Banks really needs to see someone to talk about his cousin.