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Excession, by Iain M. Banks
The ships! Oh the ships indeed - Banks really had a good time with this one, going deep into his Minds to a level that previous entries in the culture series had not. What is most interesting here, and used to great extent, was the dialog between the ships themselves, along with timestamps and communication parameters that one could really spend some time studying, since I’m sure he fretted over each number used.
The rules, logic and abilities of the Culture in general are even more fully developed here, as done in each successive book, and we also get a surprisingly believable treatment of hyper (and ultra) space travel. It really becomes central to the action in the back half of the story and one gets sort of accustomed to thinking along those lines which is quite cool.
It was moderately disappointing (spoiler) that the Excession was so tremendously a macguffin though it did a fine job of focusing the events in the tale and allowing things to move right along based on decisions of how to deal with it, and political ramifications and dirty tricks enacted with it as an excuse.
In his previous Culture novels I’ve felt that the last quarter or so of the story he would get himself into a very small space (an underground cave, a complicated game...) and we would sort of wrap up what had been an expansive adventure with a sort of myopic view of events. He must have tried to avoid that this time, with a sweeping space combat unfolding along with the personal dramas that had been set up for the rest of the text.
Another satisfying read leaving one wanting more tales from his universe.
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