Review Detail

[bluegargantua]

Hi,

So I've reviewed a number of Culture novels by Iain Banks and I feel they've gotten better as time goes on. So I was definitely looking forward to his newest Culture novel Surface Detail.

I'm happy to say that the upward trend continues.

So, like most Culture novels, we've got several plot threads slowly weaving their way together. As always, these threads are deftly managed and keep things moving along without being confusing or bogging down. The overarching theme for this story is how advanced civilizations deal with the concept of an afterlife when you can download and preserve a sentience virtually for as long as you like.

Our threads in this case include:

• Lededje Y'breq -- indentured slave to Joiler Veppers, the man who subtly rules a non-Culture empire of human worlds. Desperate to escape her bondage to Veppers, she winds up dead and then mysteriously alive again in the Culture. The Culture is happy to give her a new body and passage to wherever she wants to go. She wants to go home to settle a score whether the Culture likes that idea or not.
  
• Space Marshall Vateuil -- Among advanced civilizations, there is some disagreement as to whether or not Hells (virtual afterlives) should be maintained. When advanced civilizations disagree, they fight out a virtual war to settle the status of the existence of hell. Vateuil is working for the anti-hell side, but mission after mission goes wrong and it looks like the war might move from the virtual to the Real.
  
• Yime Nsokyi -- Agent of Quietus, the Culture Contact department in charge of dealing with the virtual dead. She's called in to investigate the mystery of Lededje's unexpected appearance within the Culture and how it might be connected to the ongoing war.
  
• Prin and Chay -- Two alien creatures who plumb the depth of their species's Hell in order to report back to the living about what's going on.
  

There are a number of other characters dragged along with each thread and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the Culture Special Circumstances ship Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints who is one of the best Culture AI personalities I've encountered so far and who gets some of the very best lines in the book.

Anyway, all these different threads slowly pull tight against one another as the larger issue of the war for hell gets resolved.

The book was a fun read, explored a lot more of the Culture as a society and really came to grips with a number of issues that don't usually get explored in techno-utopian sci-fi. It also forms a pretty convenient stepping-on point for people who haven't read any of the other Culture novels before. So highly recommended both for old-hands and newcomers to Banks's work.

later
Tom

Comments

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Oh, man. I still have yet to make it through Matter. Bank's lead-ups to the action have been getting more and more leisurely as he writes more Culture books, and I prefer a more concise narrative style.

[bluegargantua]

This one picks up a lot faster. Certainly there's a lot more action. It's the Culture at war so it's got more of a focus.

later
Tom

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints who is one of the best Culture AI personalities I've encountered so far

What, better than Xenophobe? Excuse me, "Xeny."

Glad to hear this is a step up. Transition was decidedly Not My Fave.

[shiffer.livejournal.com]

Sounds like another one for the reading list. Culture-wise I'm still stuck in Use of Weapons, which for some reason didn't grab me by page 100 when Anathem came out, and has been on the shelf since.