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I'm trying to decide which Iain M Banks book to read next. I started with Consider Phlebas, which I absolutely loved. Next I read Use of Weapons, which overall I guess wasn't really my thing because I never felt all that interested in what was going on with the characters. Consequently (mild spoiler) the reveal at the end - which put into perspective all sorts of things - was a nice tie-up but didn't engage me much because I think I didn't really care that much about the character. Reading peoples' reactions to Use of Weapons made me think about why it didn't really gel with me and why I did like Consider Phlebas so much (there are even some parallel themes between Use of Weapons and Consider Phlebas so I'm going to chalk it up to 'some things just don't work out'.) Anyway, I thought it might help guide my next book choice. Trying samples at random got me mixed results. I got Kindle samples for the Algebraist - which just struck me as bizarre; Feersum Endjin - which seemed kinda interesting but really hard to read and the sample ended before I could get an idea of where it was "going"; and The Player of Games - which, I'll be honest, just seemed the most accessible and straightforward to me after reading the sample and therefore the most likely for me to try next so far.  Any other suggestions on which book I might enjoy next?
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Oct 10, 2012 04:29
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Player of Games is a good, accessible novel, but it didn't grab me as much as a lot of people in this thread. You didn't mention Look to Windward, but I'd recommend it anyway. It doesn't have Consider Phlebas' crazy action set-pieces, but it touches on the repercussions of the Idiran-Culture war more than any of the other Culture books.
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Oct 10, 2012 04:51
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Definitely go with Player of Games next and then maybe Look to Windward.
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Oct 10, 2012 10:10
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I loving love Player of Games. There are a couple of pivotal moments in that where I was genuinely moved which is hard to do these days. When the SC drone shows Gurgh the horrors of the Azad civ then the next day he loving annihilates his opponent and when Gurgh relearns Marain when playing the emperor and as such plays as the culture I'm 80% though Hydrogen Sonata, fairly happy so far, annoyed at the sub-plot of the president guy and his lover but it doesn't matter because they are dead now 
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Oct 10, 2012 13:05
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MeLKoR posted:Definitely go with Player of Games next and then maybe Look to Windward.
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Oct 10, 2012 13:12
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I'd still say read Player of Games beforehand - you're right that Look to Windward offers more insight into the day to day life of the Culture, but I think I enjoyed it a lot more for having read most of the other novels beforehand. My main recommendation would be to read all the 'early' Culture novels - Player of Games, Excession, Look to Windward - before heading on to Matter, Surface Detail and The Hydrogen Sonata, though. Stuff doesn't progress very quickly in the Culture, but there are noticeable differences. Incidentally, finished The Hydrogen Sonata yesterday. It's pretty much the definition of a shaggy dog story, isn't it? Not bad, but not particularly interesting either.
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Oct 10, 2012 13:50
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Thanks everyone, I'll definitely check out Look to Windward, maybe after Player of Games and go from there. I really appreciate the help in picking stuff out.
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Oct 10, 2012 14:55
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If I had to recommend a particular reading order, it would be Player of Games (because it's better and more Culture-centric than Consider Phlebas), Use of Weapons (because it's Banks' best novel) and then Excession or Look to Windward (because you'll need something comparatively relaxing after the gut-punch that is Use of Weapons). Honestly, outside of those four, I found the other books in the series mostly forgettable. Not bad, but average.
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Oct 10, 2012 17:50
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I think Excession has got to be one of my faves if only the various bits with the minds and "the Oh god we're doomed, wait...<ENDING RUINING SPOILER> Eccentric ship out of loving nowhere, turns out to no realy be eccentric and oh did I mention I've built an entire war fleet inside myself? towards the end. I like me some space opera, and that whole sequence was awesome.
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Oct 11, 2012 10:25
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Cardiovorax posted:If I had to recommend a particular reading order, it would be Player of Games (because it's better and more Culture-centric than Consider Phlebas), Use of Weapons (because it's Banks' best novel) and then Excession or Look to Windward (because you'll need something comparatively relaxing after the gut-punch that is Use of Weapons). Honestly, outside of those four, I found the other books in the series mostly forgettable. Not bad, but average. I would say definitely read Consider Phlebas before Look to Windward.
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Oct 11, 2012 11:39
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Pope Guilty posted:I would say definitely read Consider Phlebas before Look to Windward.
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Oct 11, 2012 19:58
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Barry Foster posted:Incidentally, finished The Hydrogen Sonata yesterday. It's pretty much the definition of a shaggy dog story, isn't it? Not bad, but not particularly interesting either. Pound_Coin posted:I think Excession has got to be one of my faves if only the various bits with the minds and "the Oh god we're doomed, wait...<ENDING RUINING SPOILER> Eccentric ship out of loving nowhere, turns out to no realy be eccentric and oh did I mention I've built an entire war fleet inside myself? towards the end.
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Oct 11, 2012 21:07
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BastardySkull posted:Sitting staring at my Kindle waiting for it to come through. 22 minutes past midnight. Tut tut, I wanted to read it before I went to bed. Loved those covers, you don't happen to have them available in high res anywhere do you?
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Oct 15, 2012 03:52
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Massive Hydrogen Sonata Spoilers. Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Mere Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath.
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Oct 15, 2012 06:58
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I suppose its that time again, keys, check, card, check, off to the bookshop. ahhhhh. W.H Smiths are doing it for half price atm, so that's a tenner well spent. staberind fucked around with this message at 11:30 on Oct 15, 2012 |
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Oct 15, 2012 10:35
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Barry Foster posted:Incidentally, finished The Hydrogen Sonata yesterday. It's pretty much the definition of a shaggy dog story, isn't it? Not bad, but not particularly interesting either. I just finished it myself and, hah, I loved that about it! Cosson't comment at the end "... ongoing history of Terrific Things The Culture And It's Brilliant Ships Had Got Up To Over The Years" sums up the book nicely - it's a bunch of enthusiast ships; non-contact, non-SC; hanging out together, interfering with things that they don't need to just for something to do, to exercise their considerable muscles, and follow it through to it's pointlessly violent conclusion to satisfy their own vanity. Did anyone else think that some elements of QiRia could be a sort of a Prospero type character, in his philosophical musings on the concept of the Culture and aging in general? e: check this out; Banks on The Use Of Weapons http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2012/oct/12/iain-banks-book-club-podcast the fart question fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Oct 16, 2012 |
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Oct 16, 2012 19:26
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I just finished Matter. Banks uses the same narrative structure every time and gods dammit I knew it was coming, but meh: The only plot thread that I felt wasn't worth the time was the bit about the Oct gathering their fleet around Sursamen, I don't think that's ever explained. It seemed like a plot device to get the Liveware Problem and SC involved, and to get the Morthanveld ship at the core to fight the LP.
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Oct 18, 2012 02:46
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I finished the Hydrogen Sonata and it was good. Not great, but pretty good. The point of most Culture novels seems to be that stuff is always happening, but history has lots of inertia and is hard to deflect. I know he probably won't write one I want to see a book with a serious threat to the Culture, and poo poo really hitting the fan. Fortunately the smaller stakes stuff (and plot lines that don't go anywhere) are still pretty interesting. The saddest part of the book for me was when the Beats Working (impatient busybody that it was) got killed. It was effectorising the Liseiden ships so well, I thought for sure it was faking its death.One last ship dance  . Also:  God I wish.
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Oct 19, 2012 16:30
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Prolonged Priapism posted:I finished the Hydrogen Sonata and it was good. Not great, but pretty good. The point of most Culture novels seems to be that stuff is always happening, but history has lots of inertia and is hard to deflect. I know he probably won't write one I want to see a book with a serious threat to the Culture, and poo poo really hitting the fan. Fortunately the smaller stakes stuff (and plot lines that don't go anywhere) are still pretty interesting. The saddest part of the book for me was when the Beats Working (impatient busybody that it was) got killed. It was effectorising the Liseiden ships so well, I thought for sure it was faking its death.One last ship dance Beats Working killed itself because it's crew got missiled in their escape module while it was playing with the Liseiden.
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Oct 19, 2012 17:13
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I just reread the relevant sections, and the module with the humans survives. At least later, the ships are talking about the ROU en route planning to pick up the humans, see what's left of the Beats Working, and not attack the Liseiden. The Beats Working forgets about the missile platform that was the first thing the Liseiden sent out, and that kills it. The ship is referred to as "suicidal" but I don't think it killed itself.
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Oct 19, 2012 17:29
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A friend of mine did this: 
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Oct 19, 2012 17:56
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For me Hydrogen Sonata was the first real deep attempt to explain the various levels of reality of mind, and what is really a mind. We have the starship minds, but we've done them many times. We have the virtual/matrix whatever you want to call it. We have the re-activated and transmitted agent and her thinking about if its really her. And of course the the mind everyone is chasing which also exists in the memory block and doesn't even know what they want anyway without its eyeballs. This has always bothered me about the culture books, what is a personality, if you copy one are there 2 beings now? This book attempts to tackle all that stuff. Not my favourite to read as a fun story but appreciate the pushing of the envelope.
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Oct 19, 2012 22:21
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FEMA summer camp posted:A friend of mine did this: hahaha yeah if I knew more programs than PSCS3 for noobs you can be sure they'd be describing 4D spirals and such. Alas, I can make only clumsy gifs. But you could cut such a good trailer for CP or Excession.
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Oct 20, 2012 01:08
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Prolonged Priapism posted:I finished the Hydrogen Sonata and it was good. Not great, but pretty good. The point of most Culture novels seems to be that stuff is always happening, but history has lots of inertia and is hard to deflect. I know he probably won't write one I want to see a book with a serious threat to the Culture, and poo poo really hitting the fan. Fortunately the smaller stakes stuff (and plot lines that don't go anywhere) are still pretty interesting. The saddest part of the book for me was when the Beats Working (impatient busybody that it was) got killed. It was effectorising the Liseiden ships so well, I thought for sure it was faking its death.One last ship dance After reading the book I was thinking something along similar lines myself. I feel at this point the Idiran War is pretty played out and that there needs to be something earth-shattering or catastrophic that happens to the Culture just to spark some interesting storylines. I felt that Look to Windward and Excession are my favorite books because of how they deal with war and 'holy poo poo what the gently caress is that'. But I've noticed a decent amount about the Culture preparations for possible future war in both Surface Detail and The Hydrogen Sonata. The Minds mention that a 'Limited' OU is mostly bullshit and most pack the firepower to obliterate all sorts of ships. And there is also talk of warships and GSVs just sitting and waiting in case they are needed to fight a war or to re-populate after something devastating happening to the rest of the civilization. I felt that the Idiran war could've used more than a Epilogue and mentions in later books to describe what really happened and how Minds and humans react to a war. We've seen a lot of how the Culture reacts to events that happen to other civilizations (Matter, Surface Detail, The Hydrogen Sonata), but there's just not a lot of introspective when it comes to major events happening within the Culture itself. I guess that's why Look to Windward and Excession are my favorites.
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Oct 20, 2012 09:45
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If Banks wanted an opponent that's suitably nasty, he could always have the threat the shellworlds from Matter were supposed to protect against finally turn up. I don't think he'd go that route though, we already know from Consider Phlebas that a major fight would play out over decades unless one side was heavily outclassed, in which case gently caress all resistance could be offered. Excession did a good job presenting a possible existential threat in a way that could be dealt with by a small number of characters in a reasonably short time frame. Is the Beats Working the first instance of a Culture ship being beaten by a substantially less advanced race? I can't recall any other examples. You could tell it was really struggling against the fleet given that the action was happening slowly enough for biologicals to register it. gender illusionist posted:e: check this out; Banks on The Use Of Weapons
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Oct 20, 2012 12:28
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Yeah I think any big threat to the Culture would come from something we haven't heard at all about. And Banks would probably come at this another way anyway - instead of some martial threat there might be some polarizing question of intervention of some kind, or retreat, or change. One of the big points about the Idiran War was that the Culture took so long to get involved because it built all the way up to a society-wide vote, with large factions abstaining or splintering off. Some event that shook the moral foundation of the Culture (and obviously involving at least a few terrifically exciting space battles) might be really cool to read about. With regard to the destruction of the Beats Working, yeah I think this is the first time we see a Culture ship get owned by something less than equiv-tech. Keep in mind though, the Beats Working is a 100m, literally unarmed, 5 person crew ship. So it facing off against the Liseiden fleet would be like a modern day speedboat with a young Magneto onboard trying to disable a dozen ships of the line from 1813 and prevent them from blasting some slower, clumsier, worse armed war galleys from the 1650s. Yeah, the speedboat can run rings around the 19th century fleet, and could escape no problem at all, and while young Magneto can deflect some shots from himself and can mess with the workings of all the ships at once, it's a huge effort, he has to be right in their midst to do it, and eventually somebody will get off a lucky shot and end the battle. Which is what happens, more or less.
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Oct 20, 2012 19:57
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Saros posted:Massive Hydrogen Sonata Spoilers. Mods, namechange to this please.
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Oct 22, 2012 20:47
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Vanadium posted:Mods, namechange to this please.
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Oct 23, 2012 22:25
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Really unimpressed with the Hydrogen Sonata, now I have finished it. It may not have helped that I read Excession a few weeks before. Excession is, I think it's fair to say, (would anyone disagree? would be interested to hear from anyone who feels opposite), a stronger and more compelling narrative, but the fact it has the same structure with a lot of Mind's eye view, makes it really hard not to compare the two. The Gzilt are also not particularly compelling as a race for the Culture to interact with. Other races, particularly the Affront and Idirans, even the slow Sarl or the Chel, are all so much more engaging I found. Still an ok-to-good Sci-Fi novel, but certainly not one of his best. And it has a really underwhelming ending, even for a Banks novel. Funso Banjo fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Oct 25, 2012 |
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Oct 25, 2012 08:48
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Just finished Hydrogen Sonata. Well, it was definitely better than Matter or Surface Detail. I was entertained the whole way through, and there weren't any dangling plot threads that go nowhere. Felt like it had passed in front of an editor once or twice. Too bad the whole mystery underlying the plot was never terribly mysterious to begin with and ended up not even making a difference anyway, oh and killing a bunch of innocent bystanders in the process. I was also kind of disappointed Banks didn't take advantage of QiRia to fill in more of the Culture's backstory. Overall: solid, amusing, but kind of forgettable.
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Oct 25, 2012 20:14
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Looking forward to BastardySkull's take on the elevenstring for his Hydrogen Sonata cover mockup. And there really was a sense of pointlessness about the events in that book, wasn't there?
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Oct 26, 2012 19:56
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I sort of felt that was half the point. These hyperintelligent Minds wade into a situation that really has very little to do with them, get a whole bunch of people killed in pursuit of a piece of information that isn't much of their business, and at the end the whole thing is for nothing because they decide to keep it secret anyway - the outcome is practically same as if they had never done anything. It demonstrates the Culture's predilection for meddling in stuff they don't really need to, the unintended consequences that result from the actions of even beings of godlike power and intellect, and the ultimate pointlessness of some of what they do. Also puts into question the actual worth of some of the Culture's other, ostensibly successful, rip-roaring adventures. I thought it was decent, but I've liked basically every M novel I've read. Not his best, but I wasn't disappointed. Even when the plots aren't amazing, it's the worldbuilding, the big setpiece scenes and the little throwaway details of these aliens' lives that I enjoy most. e: slightly more conservative spoilers big scary monsters fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Oct 26, 2012 |
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Oct 26, 2012 21:30
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big scary monsters posted:I sort of felt that was half the point. This is why I don't really mind when a character's arc doesn't really contribute to whatever heavy duty poo poo that's going down. I pretty much expect it from Culture books. Not saying that people shouldn't feel otherwise, because demonstrably it doesn't always work. What I actually found funny about Hydrogren Sonata was that the book openly and repeatedly acknowledges this: Tefwe seems to struggle to justify the effort to the various people she persuades to help the search for QiRia's memories. The Minds all but say why the hell not? several times. Even the antagonists sort of say 'whatevs' in the end. In any case, the book has put me in the mood for another read through of Excession 
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Oct 27, 2012 18:25
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I have to say, the epilogue of Surface Detail made me so loving happy. I'd completely written off that plot thread, however interesting it was. I thought that Chay's thread was pretty unnecessary. I'd gotten all I needed out of the description of the Hell in the chapter where Prin escapes and she doesn't. The rest seemed pretty indulgent, maybe even a junior high-ish exercise in cobbling together profanity.
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Oct 27, 2012 18:26
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Hate to detract from Hydrogen Sonata chat but I just wanted to chime in and say Feersum Endjinn is the only novel I've ever read that has a really successful twist/reveal that takes the form of the final word in the entire text. Plus that whole bit being told from Bascule's point of view was just great, that guy is one of Banks' best characters ever. Also about to properly start Matter. Got 30 pages into it last week and really like where it's going (I've already figured out that the setting is – I'm assuming – a series of concentric hollow planets which is cool as hell).
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Oct 27, 2012 18:27
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Mammal Sauce posted:Hate to detract from Hydrogen Sonata chat but I just wanted to chime in and say Feersum Endjinn is the only novel I've ever read that has a really successful twist/reveal that takes the form of the final word in the entire text. Plus that whole bit being told from Bascule's point of view was just great, that guy is one of Banks' best characters ever.
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Oct 27, 2012 19:14
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Prolonged Priapism posted:
Also, the Beats Working tried not to hurt the Liseiden ships, only keep them from shooting things up. It used effectors, and was able to control the targeting and fire control - meaning it could easily have used the Liseiden weapons to take out other ships if it wanted, even if it hadn't had any weapons of its own. It chose not to. Liked The Hydrogen Sonata quite a bit, but then I had no major problem with Surface Detail or Matter either.
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Oct 28, 2012 18:08
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Prolonged Priapism posted:Also: What is this supposed to be? 
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Oct 29, 2012 00:37
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Decius posted:Also, the Beats Working tried not to hurt the Liseiden ships, only keep them from shooting things up. It used effectors, and was able to control the targeting and fire control - meaning it could easily have used the Liseiden weapons to take out other ships if it wanted, even if it hadn't had any weapons of its own. It chose not to. I think part of the point of Hydrogen Sonata is that these ships aren't any kind of pros, they were just whatever happened to be on the scene. Broadly speaking the Gzilt's drama wasn't going to have any impact on the Culture, other than having a general interest in what the hell is up with Subliming. The book made a point of stating that SC wasn't involved and the ITG from Excession was staying out of things after making a hash of that. I wonder if Banks was satirizing "the big twist" cliche by downplaying the significance of the Gzilt's past.
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Oct 29, 2012 00:39
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I just finished The Hydrogen Sonata. I have to say, I was losing interest and ended up leaving it for a day or two at about the time they were swimming up through the water at the end, but then the anticlimax came and went and I actually quite liked the peaceful nothing that came afterwards. It felt quiet and natural. That said, I really can't see myself ever bothering to read this one again.
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Nov 2, 2012 13:36
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