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Look to Windward Iain M Banks 9780743421928 Books

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Look to Windward Iain M Banks 9780743421928 Books

Every book in the "Culture Series" is very special. They build a very complex view of unimaginable worlds full of amazing beings of all shapes and sizes. Most are slow burners that usually end in a cacophony of chaos. This one is a slow burn for most of the novel although it starts explosively. Most of the story is concerned with a master composer and a humanoid (who hads a retrieved soul within him with whom he has many interesting discussions) sent on a secret mission which supposedly involves the composer. The Culture novels offer the reader a very complex and detailed picture of alien civilizations which at the same time offer an insight into our world. Sometimes slow and detailed but well worth the read and once I started reading them I was hooked!


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Look to Windward Iain M Banks 9780743421928 Books Reviews

The book is absolutely fine. It's a typical Culture series novel. Like many of them, however, the pace is uneven. But still a great read for a Culture fan! What rates 3 stars however is the lousy e book formatting. This is even worse than usual. And for some reason this e book cost significantly more than the other Culture e books? What gives?
This is ostensibly the story of a suicide bomber, but really the whole thing is a thematic exploration of death, and why people might seek it, or flirt with it. The theme echoes throughout the book, exploring ideas like extreme sports, PTSD-related suicide, and the calm, willing realization that you've had a good run. It also plays with the reader somewhat, setting up narrative expectations only to subvert those expectations in ways that still result in a satisfying story. It's like what some of the randomness from Consider Phlebas was trying to accomplish actually done well.
Iain M. Banks returns to the culture and to a character from one of his earlier novels Consider Phlebas. Unlike some of his work this novel stays ocused on the essential protagonists and doesn't wander off into a couple of hundred redundant pages. It's still a big book mind you and one which careful and considered reading makes the most of. The plot is relatively simple - The Chelgrians seek revenge on the Culture and send a former military officer to destroy a Culture Orbital. The mind of said orbital is aware of the plot but let's part of it happen since it's an old mind who still suffers from the effects of the Idiran war thousands of years before.
Look to Windward not only has a coherent plot but also investigates some of the attitudes of the Culture towards other races in the galaxy. You also have a graphic example of why you shouldn't "mess" with the Culture so keep reading to the end. It really is worth it.
Fans of Iain Banks will recognize a marvelous story with some real punch, in which mass violence and profound moral ambiguity take on human (or essentially human) dimensions. What is the best revenge? How can we avoid having our individuality washed out by the horrors of genocide? Can duty transcend human empathy?

Banks maintains several lines of suspense in a wonderfully creative interstellar setting, involving a work of art performed against the vision just arriving of the destruction of a world many years back. The manifold meanings woven into the event include plots for a form of revenge, and suspense as to how the artist is related to them. The question of whether cultures mature to the same standard form gets surprisingly insightful treatment - it may change the way you think about such matters

Heroism can be futile here, and cynical manipulation can be moral. Nobody gets off easy. Including the reader.

I personally liked "The Algebraist" better, but in its own way "Look to Windward" is just as satisfying and engaging.
While not quite the scale of a Stapledon, Iain M. Banks wrote on a huge scale - galactic, in fact. His tales of the Culture run into parsecs, if not megaparsecs, and involve (or imply) similarly long time scales.

The Culture is a vast conglomeration of worlds, Orbitals, and God only knows what else, running to trillions of (mostly human) people. And, through its Special Circumstances operatives, the Culture meddles with other civilizations - always for their own good.

One such civilization is the Chelgrians, a kinda-sorta humanoid species with a fifth limb, the midlimb, and other deviations from human norm like fur and being descended from predators rather than omnivores. The Chelgrians were a firmly caste-driven society until the Culture interfered; that interference resulted in a bloody civil war for which the Culture accepts guilt.

Our two main characters are both Chelgrians. One, who missed the civil war, is Ziller, a composer who lives on a Culture Orbital, a sort of ringworldy thing run by a Mind. (The Minds of the Culture are vast artificial intelligences capable of running whole worlds ... and other things.) He is composing a new symphony to be played by the light of a nova caused in the Culture's last great war, hundreds of years ago, as it reaches the Orbital.

The other is Quilan, a military officer who barely survived the Chelgrian civil war, and lost his wife. He comes to the Orbital on a mission so secret even he does not know what it is; that knowledge is buried in his brain along with another personality, a General sent as his co-pilot and advisor. (Or so it seems.)

The clash of interests between the two (who never actually meet) takes up a great part of the narrative. Other parts take place in an "airsphere," a bubble of air so large that it is, apparently, gravitationally stable, and supports "dirigible behemothaurs," creatures bigger than most starships, who may or may not be sentient as we understand it. Here a scholar from the Culture makes a potentially deadly discovery - which, in turn, ties in to the main plot, as you would expect.

Banks's weakness as a writer was usually endings. This novel, I am happy to say, has a completely satisfying climax, though it is very much in Banks's style. Like all of Iain M. Banks's science fiction novels, it is thoroughly worth reading.
Every book in the "Culture Series" is very special. They build a very complex view of unimaginable worlds full of amazing beings of all shapes and sizes. Most are slow burners that usually end in a cacophony of chaos. This one is a slow burn for most of the novel although it starts explosively. Most of the story is concerned with a master composer and a humanoid (who hads a retrieved soul within him with whom he has many interesting discussions) sent on a secret mission which supposedly involves the composer. The Culture novels offer the reader a very complex and detailed picture of alien civilizations which at the same time offer an insight into our world. Sometimes slow and detailed but well worth the read and once I started reading them I was hooked!