Review:Pretty solid book. I generally enjoyed it, but man the last 1/4 of the book is insanely slow. And one of the characters is completely disconnected and not really needed (but her parts are generally short). Really looking forward to the next couple as I heard they are the meat of the series. Read more

Review:A new wave of (mostly British) authors are creating entire universes all their own, and Banks is the latest entry. Although I found his universe of interest and worth exploring, the book left me cold in a number of ways. The story alternated between the young female star (Lededje), and a number of AI personalities that were trapped in their own private hells. Apparently a number of cultures in this galaxy punish the dead by copying their memories and 'torturing' the memories in computerized hell... Read more

Review:Banks Culture novel, Matter is the 8th book in The Culture series. It is some 200,000 words long with a section of 4,000 appendices and glossaries. It's so intricate that even in its intricacy it’s multifarious. It's filled with buzzwords and characters that disappear for ages and then come back, with lots of recurrences and - forwards. The story incorporates various civilizations at different stages of technological development. Shellworlds are ancient simulated planets comprising of nested con... Read more

Review:Banks is one the rare writers who can hop through different genres and be worth reading in all of them. However, his sci-fi, and especially the Culture novels are a cut above the high standard he sets. This book is a worthy entry into the Culture pantheon, if not quite as good as Excession or Use of Weapons. Once again, Banks examines war through the lens of space opera. His musings on war are not restricted to a simplistic good guys/bad guys view, but instead focuses on tragedies and triumphs f... Read more

Review:This Culture novel is absolutely one of the most thoughtful, funny, thrilling and well-written novels by Iain M. Banks. It is the existential issues of, whether our individual or collective contributions and efforts and our constructions of meaning matter (in the short or in the long run), which is dealt with here. The issues are being adressed from not only epistemological / philosophical angles, but also more sociological angles. The book was released in October 2012 and Banks died in June 201... Read more

Review:Once you strip away all of the conspiracies, supercomputers, spatial anomalies, & interstellar wars, "Excession" is ultimately a simple story:

Boy meets Girl. Boy gets Girl. Boy & Girl have reciprocal sex changes so that they can get each other pregnant. Boy (who is now a girl) gets bored and has sex with Other Girl. Girl sees Boy (who is now a girl) & Other Girl having sex. Girl goes crazy. Girl guts Boy (who is now a girl) like a fish in his sleep. Girl feels guilty a... Read more

Review:Utopian sci fi - it held my interest sufficiently that I will purchase another - I did not consider the characterizations to be very deep - that is ok though - it is enough to create a world to ponder - Read more

Review:If you are looking for a spellbinding thriller with tons of great action and adventure that keeps you on the edge of your seat with awesome characters then you'll enjoy this book! In fact I highly recommend it. Read more

Review:This is your standard cliffhanger it is a fast read literally can be read in I don't know 30 minutes 40 if you go slow. Nothing really fascinating about it one steamy scene it's just a very quick read so it doesn't stand out needs to have more in it to give it any sort of real review because you don't really get a sense of the characters you can't in such a quick read. It leaves you with a quick cliffhanger about wanting to know about the rogue wolves but even that doesn't leave you interested e... Read more

Review:This series moves along at a lightening pace.The action never stop building and with each book the characters reveal more of their personalities. i will be very sad to reach the final chapter in the seies and highly recommend these books for hours of exciting entertainment! Read more