Another example of Iain Banks incredible imagination and carelessness with the lives of his characters.
Also another Culture novel that doesn't really touch on the Culture that much.
If you are a fan already, you'll love it. If you are new to Iain M Banks then if probably start somewhere else.
Good though
Everything here is about scale, breadth, entwinement, scope, and interdependence. Even utopia must reckon with the cosmos. A utopia must not be exclusive and totalizing—or else it turns dystopic—while the inclusion of non-utopia in the utopian mindset undercuts as well as defines the utopian mindset. In that same way, luckily, the utopian mindset is harbored, sheltered, and fostered within even the most dystopian society. And even within a society that grinds down the individual do we find individuals who resist and rise.
