It was a slow read as it never really captivated me.

The one reason I wanted to read it was to explore an iteration of humanity that came close to what I am imagining for a world creation in a SciFi book I am trying to write. In that, this book failed as others have commented. We are given numerous objective and not always reliable snapshots of the society, but we don't really get into it.

We wonder if Banks was intentionally trying to go against what makes good scifi, and exploiting what makes poor scifi. We are going to give it 3 stars though which we cannot really defend except we are eager to turn to the next recommended book in the series.