Rating: 
Summary: YES! This is the greatest SF book ever written!
Review: This is the ultimate rock and roll space opera to end all space operas. This book is NOT meant to enlighten you, uplift you or in any other way massage your intellectual ego into fawning over how wonderful that nice Mr. Banks must be.It's meant to take you on a searing 300mph ride through the darkest parts of your mind leaving you blistered and burned up. You have to dead on the inside not to get a kick out of this one. After I read it I was so blown away that for 3 days, I could not speak with anyone about it. I have read much SF in my time (Asimov, Bradbury, Dick, Herbert, etc.) and can only say that nothing compares to this piece of work. If you hate rollercoasters stay off this one.
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Summary: One of the most darkly beautiful character studies in SF
Review: There are few books which evoke such a wrenching emotional response that they make me cry. Irving's The World According to Garp was one. Brook Hansen's The Chess Garden was another, and Mark Helprin's A Soldier of the Great War was a third. Use of Weapons simply destroyed me. Here is a book which not only provides a great and tragic character study, but also manages to comment on war and conflict in way unmatched since Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. Add to this the glittering marvels of the Culture universe...and this book just does not let up. I cannot praise it highly enough--and I have to say also that Banks' Culture novels have gotten me reading SF again--a genre I had long abandoned out of disgust at the generally horrible writing and pathetic use of literary technique.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book.
Review: Excellent book. On a par with the other Banks greats; but with a conclusion that will leave you reeling. I had to read this book twice back-to-back to make sure I hadn't missed anything.
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Summary: How is a war in space like a Cold War on earth?
Review: Iain Banks's _Use of Weapons_ is (intentionally or not) a hallucinogenic science-fictional retelling of John le Carre's _The Spy Who Came in From the Cold_. Le Carre's book is a lesson in the horror and manipulation of the espionage business, while Banks details the cruelety and violence of space adventure. Le Carre's image of the spy business was a reaction to Ian Fleming's James Bond novels; Banks's space opera is a grisly objection to the pulp-sf of "Star Wars" and 1930's magazines. Both are revealed slowly as a mass of information is sorted out and revealed; both have shocking and unexpected endings.
Rating:
Summary: simply the best
Review: I've read a lot of SF over the years, and sometimes think that I've read it all. Mr. Banks work, "Use of Weapons" was a book that I read in one furious mind-burning day. The current bookshelves are so full of pathetic, derivative work that I had never hoped in a million years that there would have been an author of this caliber that I could have overlooked. I immediately ordered all of his books from Amazon, and read them all. They all differ in style, and this is the most elegant and powerful of them all.
Rating:
Summary: Unmissable!
Review: I read a lot of Science fiction when I was a kid, but grew tired of it and left it alone for a long time. Iain Banks is responsible for restoring my interest in the genre. I think he's the most refreshing, original, and shocking sci-fi author I have encountered . . . with Use of Weapons being his best work. At times the story is confusing, but it is always intriuging, occasionally funny, very compelling and ultimately chilling. I recommend it unreservedly.
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Summary: My favourite work of modern fiction
Review: With an ending that will blow you away, this is one of the most intelligent and moving works of modern fiction you will ever read. Beautifully structured, it is both funny and yet shot through with dark premonitions of pain and tragedy whose true nature is only revealed at the end. If you read only one book this year, make sure this is it.
Rating:
Summary: A Knife Missile's Guide to Complicity
Review: Banks at his best is difficult to match, and here he is at almost his very peak. Initially confusing, at least a partial rereading is required to understand the full significance of the introductory poem, the epilogue and the history chapters which alternate with the main story. The bleak mood throughout makes this a companion piece to his non-SF novel from about the same time, Complicity - his finest work. The Player of Games may be an easier introduction to the Culture universe, and Excession more honest, but The Use of Weapons continues to chill for months and years.
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Summary: I was absolutely blown away by the ending!
Review: i loved it. i'd never even heard of Ian Banks when i got the book out of a bag of sf books my dad's friend was throwing away. the first time i read it, i was confused by the jumping back and forth between past and present, but by the end it started to make more sense. the second third fourth... times i've read it have only made it that much better! It was the most intriguing book i had ever read.
It is certainly one of the greatest sf books i've ever read, and the only one that's made me cry.
But buy it, read it, and make your own decision.
Rating: 
Summary: Not bad, but predictable
Review: Most people who say things like "this is the best book/SF/Banks of all time" were probably moved by the surprising and powerful ending. The problem is, I found the ending not surprising in the least, and not that powerful, either. Since it's been a few years, and you can't trust your memory exactly with things like these, I wouldn't say that I knew exactly beforehand what the big revelation would be, but that I was pretty sure, quite a few pages before the ending, that something of that kind was inevitable. Maybe Banks tried to be as mean as possible, but it somehow didn't have the impact on me. I didn't like the character that much in the first place, and found some passages of the book a bit boring (which I am not used to in a Banks novel), so I could only say, "so what?" when the big thing was finally revealed.
Well, maybe that's a bit harsh, but you get the idea. The book could work better if you don't know a lot of Banks, and therefore don't know what to expect, but IMHO his other books are more interesting to read. As a culture novel about how the culture makes use of "weapons", I liked 'Player of Games' better. As a sinister novel with a tragic but superbly characterized main protagonist, I found 'Against a Dark Background' much more rewarding. A "6" still means "above average" though.
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