Excession

Rating:
Summary: Reflections on the Culture
Review: While not the best of the Culture series, _Excession_ is interesting on several levels.

First, I suspect that Banks wrote this book to highlight problems with the Culture. Sure, it's a beautiful semi-anarchy, enormously capable, everyone leads near perfect, idle lives, etc. However, suddenly something shows up that is both beyond the understanding of even the Culture Minds and is one of a kind.

Result? The Culture starts acting just like any other civilization: grasping, plotting and willing to go to almost any lengths to win the artifact. Couple that to long buried plans to trick an entire race into a war it cannot possibly win just to "teach them a lesson" and you begin to realize that maybe the Culture isn't so lilly-white after all.

Second, up until now most of the ships in the Culture novels have been little more than funny names. Excession begins to show us a bit more of how the Minds that run the Culture really function- they may be tremendously intelligent, but they're still pompous, paranoid, conniving, cliquish, depressed and just a bit crazy.

Bonus points for having possibly the best two ship names yet: the ROUs "Attitude Adjustor" and "Killing Time"

Eric Remy

Rating:
Summary: Creative and thought provoking.
Review: I really like this book. It started out a bit slow but I soon found myself unable to put it down. In fact, I have read the book three times and find something I missed each time. Word of caution; you will need to have your brain engaged. This is not grade school level reading and the innovative twist of presenting data streams as AI dialog will trip you up if you are merely skimming the book to get to the battle scenes. Yes, the organic characters are a bit shallow but Banks is making a point here. If you like the Star Wars series you may not like Banks. If you miss Silverberg, Bradbury and Heinlein and they way they challenged you, you will like this book.

Rating:
Summary: Confusing, vague, and just plain wierd
Review: Ok take an enthusiastic diplomat, a wacked-out interstellar government, a fleet of smart-alek ships, a spoiled girl and... GO!!!!

There were times in this book where I got the feeling that something was amiss. I found myself asking "is he serious or just trying to make a joke?" or "umm, what are they talking about?" and even "hey, are you making fun of me?" Yes, I was just that confused in some parts.

It starts off promisingly enough. The ambassador Genar-Hoefen is visitng the Affront, a race like psychotic Klingons. Then he is called away to investigate a mystery in the fabric of space-time, the Excession. What is this Excession? Well the book is pretty vague about that (the nonsensical epilogue only serves to muddle things more) and I was left wondering just what happened.

Some of the book was just plain silly. The idea that you could change sex by just thinking about it was odd. I won't even go into the idea that a pregnant woman's zygote is stored in his/her testicle when transformation is complete. Apparently ships have artificial minds that make them sarcasitc and wise guys and they have their own rights (or something). Oh yeah, and there was a talking birds too. However, along with the silliness come surprising creativity and even some cool ideas (the best of which are not well developed). I just wanted a little more explanation.

If you like wierd stuff and don't confuse easily, try this one out. However you have been warned.

Rating:
Summary: Not just for geeks anymore
Review: Remarkably warm and human SF by a writer whose talents transcend genre fiction, yet who still delivers hardcore cutting-edge science fiction satisfaction.

Before this book, science fiction novels left me with the feeling you get after eating a whole bag of Doritos.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting and witty
Review: This was the first by Mr. Banks that I read, and I found it very novel and interesting. This is quite unlike anything I've ever experienced, and a very good book at that. Read it!

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but tedious.
Review: This book had many interesting concepts but there was too much not relevant to the story and it is somewhat confusing trying to keep all the players in their proper place. It would have been a much better book if it were a few hundred pages shorter.

Rating:
Summary: The most imaginative Sci Fi novel I have ever read.
Review: Page after page of thrilling action, Space ships the size of small planets doing battle with the sort of tactical agility Alexander the Great would have been proud of. You get to the end of the Chapter and realise that everything you have just read took place in just three milliseconds. Mind Blowing Sci Fi that realy is "state of the art." A brilliantly crafted story interlaced with edge of the seat action. Only Iain Banks novels are this exiting, for me Exession has the edge over Use of Weapons and Consider Phleabas. I can't wait to get my hands on the next one. Highly reccomended.

Rating:
Summary: Good pseudo-hard scifi in the Vinge tradition
Review: If you liked "Fire Upon the Deep" because of its universe, you should like "Excession". Banks has built a very creative 'Low Beyond' style universe and populated it with characters of depth. Some passages are pedantically cryptic, probably for effect, but any software programmer will be at home with his depiction of AI and space technology in a time well beyond our own.

Rating:
Summary: A book that promises much, but dosen't quite make it.
Review: Before you begin reading this book flip to the back and find the epilogue. Grip the page firmly and tear the bastard out. This will significantly improve the book. When I finished the epilogue I nearly through the entire book in the fire. It's hard to believe a single page can turn a silk purse into a sow's ear, but Iain manages it.

The prologue isn't as bad as the epilogue. It's merely a cure for insomnia rather than annoying. When I was half way through the prologue I was tempted to put the book away and get something more interesting. I forced myself to continue as Iain has had numerous successful books and 'Excession' won the British SF award. There had to be something more to it then the drivel I was reading.

Once you've waded through the prologue and start the book proper it become less tedious, unfortunately it becomes almost unbearably pretentious. Pages are wasted with totally irrelevant symbols and meaningless strings of numbers. It seems once you've made a name for yourself you can indulge any little vanity you want and still get it published. Fortunately in the latter part of the book even Iain seems to have got sick of the attack of pretension he begins with.

The story itself is interesting and imaginatively written, but because of the tedious prologue, pretentious writing affectation and hackneyed epilogue I can't give it more then three stars and was tempted to give it two stars. If this is a fair example of Iain's work I won't be racing out to read his others.

Now that I've finished bitching about the book I'll give you a bit of a run down of what happens, in case you want to inflict it upon yourself.

There is this thing called the Excession that just turns up one day. It is clearly an alien object of some sort with more advanced technology then the other members of the 'Culture' (This is not the first Culture novel).

Everybody wants to find it (it keeps zipping around to annoy people) and take it over. To this end various groups hatch plots. The ship minds want it, the humans want it, and the Affronter want it. There are subgroups and plotters within each of these groups as well. And apart from everyone wanting it they also want to stop everyone else from getting it. as you can imagine this makes for an excessively complicated plot.

Iain follows all the threads he begins logically and intelligently, and then draws them all together at the climax. If it wasn't for the beginning, the end and the pretension, all off which could be deleted without affecting the story, then it'd be a four star book.

Rating:
Summary: thomas the tank engine in space
Review: Excession is Iain M Bank's train set in his attic doing all the cool things he ever wanted it to do. In the final analysis it must be Thomas the tank engine in space- cos all the ships have their own personalitities and go about doing stuff they want to do - not necessarily what the humans want them to do. But in my analogy who is the fat controller. Hmm. I think we might be waiting a while to find that one out. LONG LIVE THE CULTURE!!