I admire the esteemed Mr Banks for his creativity, his worldbuilding, and the depth and complexity of the Culture mythos.

But. But. I have a love/hate relationship with the Culture series because the quality is just so uneven -- some of the Culture books are fun and engaging, and some of them are just muddled slogs. This one is a muddled slog. There's too way much lovingly crafted description of yet another fabulous complicated interstellar society (Zzzzz....skip skip skip skip) and the actual characters are so flatly drawn I had trouble telling them apart.

The book could have been half the size and had a third fewer characters and it would have been a much tighter story. Disappointing.