USE OF WEAPONS

Rating:
Summary: Spectacular and thought-provoking space opera
Review: Use of Weapons is set around the edges of Banks' utopian star-civilization the Culture, which is featured in a number of Banks' books. Cheradenine Zakalwe is not a Culture citizen, but he has been employed by the Special Circumstances branch of the Culture's Contact section as a mercenary, trying to influence conflicts on a variety of planets to be resolved in the direction the Culture prefers. As the main action of the story opens, Zakalwe has "retired" from SC. Diziet Sma, who has been Zakalwe's "control" in the past, is rudely summoned from her latest (quite pleasurable) assignment in order to find Zakalwe and recruit him for one more emergency mission (involving a situation with which Zakalwe was previously involved).

From this point, the novel progresses in two main directions. The main branch of the story follows Sma forward in time, as she pursues and eventually finds Zakalwe, and as Sma and Zakalwe accomplish, in general terms, the mission on which the SC branch has sent them. This involves convincing a retired politician who supports the "right" side (anti-terraforming, pro-Machine Intelligence) of a conflict in an unstable star cluster to return to the arena and forestall a coming war, and then also involves some intervention in a "brushfire" which has broken out as a precursor to the war. This story is exciting and enjoyable, with plenty of Banksian action, Banksian scenery, and Banksian humor, the last as usual particularly embodied in the character of Sma's drone assistant, Skaffen-Amtiskaw. (Banks' machine characters are inveterate scene-stealers.)

The second plot thread moves steadily backward in time (complicated by a couple of even-farther backward flashbacks), following Zakalwe's career as an agent for SC, back to his recruitment by SC and his war experiences prior to that, and finally back to his formative years as an aristocrat of sorts on a planet with roughly 19th-20th century Earth technology and social structure. This thread allows us to slowly learn more of Zakalwe's character, and of the traumatic events which have made him the rather tortured individual he is at the time of the main action. Thus, the novel's structure is at first blush mildly experimental. However, this structure is really logical, and essential to the reader's experience. Essentially, the main action is illuminated by our growing understanding of Zakalwe's past. And the use of Sma as a viewpoint character (despite her somewhat non-centrality to most of the action sequences) is a vital strategy: in a sense, she becomes a stand-in for the reader: and part of our understanding of the novel is trying to understand Sma's feelings for Zakalwe (which are not romantic at all, by the way), and to measure her Use of the Weapon that is Cheradenine Zakalwe in the context of Zakalwe's humanness, and in a sort of parallel or contrast to Zakalwe's expert use of a variety of weapons.

The climax of the novel is a shocker. However, it's not just a "surprise ending for the sake of the surprise". It's crucial to our understanding of the book: and it gives the book meaning far beyond the (very good) adventure story it has been up to that point. The climax seemed to reverberate back through the entire book, giving new meaning to almost every incident. This is a book which almost demands immediate rereading. I think it is still Banks' best book, and one of the essential SF novels of the past quarter-century.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: A masterpiece. Couldn't put it down. Highly recommended by my wife who is not a science fiction fan.

Rating:
Summary: Blending tragedy and comedy
Review: Iain M.Banks has clearly profited from his readings in Science Fiction. Douglas Adams for the absurd situation involving machines (the scenes on the ships that transport Sma and her drone),Jack Vance for the description of eerie cultures and ambiences, Isaac Asimov for the political intriguing,and Philip K. Dick for the utter desolation and tragedy in which he puts some of his charachters. Of course ,there is also Iain M.Banks' bizarre stylish and cryptic talent.His state of the art seems to be a player of games considering Phlebas against a dark background.Will the use of weapons avert a fearsum endjinn,he asks himself. But through excessions and inversions,he'll always look to windward.

Rating:
Summary: Have a seat...
Review: First off, a public service anouncement:

This novel (and all other Iain (M) Banks books) is still in print in the UK. If you've read his in-print stuff and can't get ahold of this, mosey over to amazon.co.uk.

Now, my two cents: This, along with Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly and Orwell's 1984, is the grestest SF book ever written (my opinion, of course, but I trust it, so you should too). You could call it anti-space-opera; as an earlier reviewer said, it is the flip side to airy Star Wars style spaceship shoot-em-ups--Use of Weapons is to The Lensman Series what Apocolypse Now is to The Green Barrets.

You can't miss with Banks (except perhaps with Excession, where he's dissapeared somewhere up the Culture's Mind's arses and can't find his way out--though in the end, even that is a worthwhile read). He is a truly talented author who creates mainstream and SF masterpieces in alternating years, and you'll be doing yourself a favour by buying a book of his.

And Look to Windward, out in the UK for a year now, gets its US release in August--sign up your pre-order now!

Rating:
Summary: one of his best
Review: use of weapons' non-linear narrative, its complex characters, and banks' ability to come up with more and more culture combine to make this a must have for lovers of iain m. banks' sci-fi. I have read all of his sci-fi books, and together with against a dark background, this ranks as his best. DO READ.

Rating:
Summary: What Is a Weapon?
Review: Once again, Banks takes us to The Culture, his galaxy-spanning civilization of humans, computer Minds, asteroid-sized Ships and annihilating weapons. Ah yes, weapons.

Banks intertwines two stories: one of The Culture and one of a world not yet contacted by The Culture. That pre-contact world is the home of a four children, a brother, two sisters and another boy, hidden from others, who is almost a brother. The oldest brother is the protagonist of both stories. Here we see him as a boy and young man, and see one aspect of the use weapons. Because the brother and the almost-brother become enemies in a war that knows no restraints.

The other story involves The Culture's efforts to subtly and less-subtly control other, non-Culture civilizations, through its Contact division and the Special Circumstances unit of Contact. Special Circumstances does the dirty work for Contact. Like much of the nomenclature in The Culture, names are euphemisms or worse. You see, special cases may require Special Circumstances, where the usual rules of Contact don't apply.

Cheradenine Zakalwe is a mercenary for Special Circumstances. He is a weapon in its hands. He takes his assignments without knowing if he is fighting on the winning or losing side, whether he is working with good guys or bad guys, or whether The Culture wants him to succeed or fail. No more than a rifle knows or cares where it is aimed, he is a weapon in the hands of his employers.

Diziet Sma is his handler. Early in the book, she recalls a time when her drone, itself an intelligent, thinking machine, used its weapons in full when Sma was attacked. Banks' description of her reaction to an unrestrained use of weapons is more than ironic.

Cheradenine Zakalwe is also the brother in that family on that unnamed world. The story of his youth and the story of his work for The Culture intertwine like the alternating chapters in the novel, spinning around each other faster and faster until Cheradenine Zakalwe and the reader confront an explosive, ugly, evil truth that has been there the entire time. Banks' revelation is so perfect that you will only ask yourself how you didn't see it sooner.

Anything, Banks is telling us, anything at all can be a weapon, and the failure of restraint in the use of weapons dooms us all.

This is an exceptional book, not the easiest of Banks' Culture books to read but by far the most rewarding. And I promise you, after reading this book you will never look at a small chair, especially a small chair painted white, in quite the same way.

Rating:
Summary: A Real Mind Bender . . .
Review: Okay, I first happened upon this book in a book store closing--fifty cents. Penny for penny this remains perhaps the best quality novel I've read in the Sci Fi genre.

Mind you, this was my first step into Culture. The dry wit of much of it had me rolling and begging my friends to let me read bits to them. I ragged my first copy and bought a second to loan to friends who always come back asking about other novels.

Out of print?! No! But, you can't buy it in the US, it seems.

One reviewer called it a prezel of a plot. Nope. The book starts in the middle and as it moves on to the end it unravels the plot toward both the beginning and the end. Granted, it did mean that things didn't make as much sense until the end, but that's Iain's game.

Play it. Read it.

Rating:
Summary: A plot timeline is NOT a pretzel!
Review: This could have been an engaging novel had the timeline not resembled a particularly tangled ball of yarn. Also the background on the main character tends to be spotty and deliberately confusing -- all for the sake of obscuring the rather feeble motivation of the main character.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing, breathtaking, and utterly readable
Review: Ahh yes, welcome back to the Culture. This utopian communist society where robots rule and serve humans, who are just so much dead weight when compared to the awesome Minds. But what about those outside the culture's sphere of influence? We were introduced to a group of such people in Consider phlebas (banks' most dissapointing culture novel in my opinion.), but they were opposing the culture. The Use of Weapons has a main chracter who is working FOR the cultures' special circumstances but is not a Perfect Culture Human himself. It uses a chapter switching style like that found in Excession, and most notably, in Against a Dark Background. However, if you allow yourself to become immersed in the book (the first 4 chapters are rough going), you will soon find this totally natural. Like most of banks' books, it is difficult to get into, but you will be amply rewarded if you do. The ending matches that of Enders Game and Catch 22 in it's sheer brilliance and sends a shiver down my spine even now, a year after reading it. I think this book stands alongside Player of Games and Excession as Banks' best Sci Fi work.

Rating:
Summary: Maybe the best SF book I've read...
Review: Banks is simply one of the best SF writers around -- there are alot of SF writers who are good storytellers, but Banks is also a GOOD WRITER. That's rare. And this is one of his best books. I'm lucky -- I knew someone (from Europe) who loaned me the book. If you're a SF fan it's worth going way out of your way to acquire this writer's books... especially this one.