This is kind of a weird book because I feel the central concept is a big introduction to make and messes with the uniqueness of a species in a previous book Look to Windward, the heaven concept of the Chelgrians. It's hard to buy the idea behind the big "war" of the book a virtual reality battle over whether it's ok to maintain a virtual reality hell sounds so silly I laughed when I first read it But as long as you accept it the book is fun and interesting and keeps up the tension. Could have done without some of the long battle description type things but eh, no big deal. I feel he could probably have done more with the virtual reality concept but I dunno. The ending wrapped things up nicely and he wrapped up most of the loose ends so I'm happy and nothing broke my suspension of disbelief

Feel it's worth warning that the book contains some rape stuff and there are some descriptions of kind of grotesque over the top gore/body horror type stuff. No rape scenes, just mentions of it.

Very ending thing hahahaha what a silly last line. Whatever. Guess he's got to get his twists in somewhere and this was a pretty funny one

Oh and the epilogue gets a dig in at right wing revisionist historians so hell yeah ( )

I think I’ve read six Culture novels now and only really liked the first two. This one has one sick idea at its core — with infinite processing power, hells can be actually instantiated as virtual worlds nonetheless all too real to those who end up in them — but there’s no way it had to be over six hundred pages. At least one of the core narratives seems to have been no more than a sandbox for Banks’s imagination and could have been cut entirely. I like Space Opera in theory but so often it falls down into tiresome battle scenes and action sequences and there’s a lot of that here. The pacing is whack, too. Banks spends 550 pages floating around the galaxy with his sentient (and always enjoyable) ships and grab bag of aliens and pan-humans, then wraps things up hastily and somewhat anti-climactically. ( )

Surface Detail, set in Banks's Culture universe, tells the story of a small-time spacefaring civilization, the Sichultian Enablement, and its wealthy magnate Veppers. Having completely dominated his own society through capitalistic machinations, Veppers aims higher and negotiates with much more advanced civilizations involved on both sides of a galaxy-wide war, manipulating and backstabbing his way to even more wealth. The Culture itself is not involved in this war but definitely has a preferred outcome, and after picking up Vepper's escaped slave, alternately emphasizes with her plight and tries to use her to influence the war. The book focuses on how much of a despicable and capricious person Veppers is, drawing obvious parallels to billionaires in our own society. Filled with realpolitik between many galactic civilizations, the overbearing personality of Veppers, and all of the Culture accoutrements we know from Banks's novels, Surface Detail was a fascinating read. ( )

374 ( )

Sigh. No more Culture books. :(

Banks was not backed up because we haven't invented that yet. Time to get to work on it! :/ ( )