A Review that Matters
Apr. 11th, 2008 11:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHi,
Just wrapped up Matter by Iain M. Banks. It's another one of his Culture novels. So it's far-future, super-science galactic utopias and how the apple cart gets almost kinda upset before the benevolent forces of good step in and keep things under control.
My normal beef with Banks is that people in his books have a distressing tendency to off themselves from unremitting despair or ennui. It's really kind of irritating. That motif has decreased in frequency as his writing has gone along and I'm happy to report that in Matter no one kills themselves and everyone who dies, dies for the right reasons -- even if that reason is to highlight how capricious and uncaring the universe is. But I didn't feel like I was watching Emo McDarkSoul whining about being in Care Bare Land. So full marks for that.
Which means there's nothing to mar the tons of crazy-brilliant ideas Banks casually tosses around as he weaves his story. Most of the action takes place on a Shellworld. Imagine if Jupiter wasn't a gas giant, but was instead, a Russian nesting doll of worlds. Hollow spheres braced inside one another with giant fusion-powered "suns" rolling on tracks across the "sky" to light each one. Now imagine that it was an unfinished public-works project left behind billions of years ago. Now imagine that it's full of death-traps and automated kill systems designed to keep out enterprising species who want to turn it into a habitat. You're pretty sure they're all deactivated now but...
So yeah, Shellworld. That's the most fully-realized crazy thing, but there's plenty of other wonderful ideas to be mined/stolen from here. The story itself is pretty good. You might think that the scale is a little small, and it is. But the last hundred pages really opens up the throttle.
Finally, the other notable feature of Culture novels are the wacky ship names. Banks gives us another slew of them. He also gives us a character who chooses to live/work on a particular Culture ship because it has the least annoying name. Again, full marks for that.
Overall, a pretty good book. You do wish there'd been a bit more "big picture" focus instead of "small world" focus, but for Banks, this is a solid effort showing a lot more optimism than earlier efforts and I ratehr like the effect. I hope he keeps it up.
later
Tom
Just wrapped up Matter by Iain M. Banks. It's another one of his Culture novels. So it's far-future, super-science galactic utopias and how the apple cart gets almost kinda upset before the benevolent forces of good step in and keep things under control.
My normal beef with Banks is that people in his books have a distressing tendency to off themselves from unremitting despair or ennui. It's really kind of irritating. That motif has decreased in frequency as his writing has gone along and I'm happy to report that in Matter no one kills themselves and everyone who dies, dies for the right reasons -- even if that reason is to highlight how capricious and uncaring the universe is. But I didn't feel like I was watching Emo McDarkSoul whining about being in Care Bare Land. So full marks for that.
Which means there's nothing to mar the tons of crazy-brilliant ideas Banks casually tosses around as he weaves his story. Most of the action takes place on a Shellworld. Imagine if Jupiter wasn't a gas giant, but was instead, a Russian nesting doll of worlds. Hollow spheres braced inside one another with giant fusion-powered "suns" rolling on tracks across the "sky" to light each one. Now imagine that it was an unfinished public-works project left behind billions of years ago. Now imagine that it's full of death-traps and automated kill systems designed to keep out enterprising species who want to turn it into a habitat. You're pretty sure they're all deactivated now but...
So yeah, Shellworld. That's the most fully-realized crazy thing, but there's plenty of other wonderful ideas to be mined/stolen from here. The story itself is pretty good. You might think that the scale is a little small, and it is. But the last hundred pages really opens up the throttle.
Finally, the other notable feature of Culture novels are the wacky ship names. Banks gives us another slew of them. He also gives us a character who chooses to live/work on a particular Culture ship because it has the least annoying name. Again, full marks for that.
Overall, a pretty good book. You do wish there'd been a bit more "big picture" focus instead of "small world" focus, but for Banks, this is a solid effort showing a lot more optimism than earlier efforts and I ratehr like the effect. I hope he keeps it up.
later
Tom
