Look to Windward

“Look to Windward” est le septième tome du cycle de la Culture de Iain M. Banks. C'est aussi, pour l'instant, mon roman préféré du cycle. Cela signifie beaucoup, vu comment j'avais déjà aimé les précédents.

Le thème principal du roman tourne autour de la guerre, sous ses aspects moraux (encore et toujours ce droit d'ingérence que s'octroie la Culture) et humains, notamment à travers le trauma des combattants revenus à la vie civile, qu'ils soient humains ou même IA. Comme souvent avec les livres qui me touchent autant que celui-ci, cela parle aussi de deuil.

Là où les premiers romans du cycle m'avait plu de façon assez rationnelle, par leurs qualités d'écriture et de narration, celui-ci m'a profondément touché. Non seulement il présente les mêmes qualités que le reste du cycle, mais il m'a semblé apporter quelque chose de plus, comme un supplément d'âme.

Je ne suis pas certain de pouvoir exprimer précisément ce que j'ai ressenti en lisant ce roman, ni pourquoi il m'a autant bouleversé. Comment l'expliquer ? Les personnages, humains et IA, sont mémorables, d'une profondeur incroyable. Le récit est à la fois captivant, parfaitement mené, et magnifique dans les sujets qu'il aborde et la façon dont il le fait. Au-delà, on touche à quelque chose d'indéfinissable, à une forme de sublime que seule la littérature, ou l'art en général, peut toucher du doigt.

J'ai évidemment très envie de poursuivre ma lecture du cycle de la Culture - plus que 3 romans ! - mais je dois dire que j'ai aussi peur de ne plus y retrouver les émotions que m'a apporté celui-ci. Quoi qu'il en soit, je n'avais pas attendu ce roman pour considérer Iain M. Banks comme un très grand auteur et le cycle de la Culture comme une oeuvre majeure de la littérature de science-fiction, mais ce roman en particulier rejoint le panthéon des mes livres favoris, ceux qui m'ont marqué de façon irrémédiable.

For some reason I'd never got around to reading Iain M. Banks, but my mother unexpectedly sent me this one for my birthday, so I eventually tried it.It's set in the far future, in a galaxy inhabited by various intelligent races, although the humans seem among the more powerful and advanced of them. There's no war going on, but there have been wars in the past, and the book deals with some unfinished business arising from a past war.Banks is a good writer and I find his prose readable and quite congenial. His characters are varied and well drawn, and can produce some mildly humorous dialogue when appropriate. The book has a definite and quite engrossing plot, although it's rather slow to get to the point.When I try to think of anything I've read that might be similar to Look to windward, I come up with [b:Babel-17 1199688 Babel-17 Samuel R. Delany https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1257546421l/1199688.SY75.jpg 13612561], which is something of a compliment because Babel-17 is one of my favourite books. Both books have the plot of a thriller, but a more ambitious style than the average thriller; an imaginative and decorative scenario; and an artistic element: poetry in Babel-17, music in Look to windward.But beyond that they're not the same. I find Look to windward, for all its good qualities, relatively lacking in subjective appeal. It's basically a rather sad story (though written with touches of humour) and its most attractive characters have only minor roles in the story.According to Wikipedia, Banks has said that his “approach has to do with my reacting to the cliché of SF's ‘lone protagonist'. You know, this idea that a single individual can determine the direction of entire civilizations. It's very, very hard for a lone person to do that.”Well, that's true. But an author who chooses to write about world-changing individuals could argue that such individuals are very rare, yes, but during the lifetime of the universe some of them can be expected to exist, so he's entitled to pick such a one and write about him.Judging by this book and the summaries I've seen of his other books, Banks reacts to the sf cliché he detests by writing about people who aim to be world-changing, but fail. I don't know about you, but I find this rather sad and downbeat. I don't insist on reading about successful world-changers, I'd be quite happy to read about people achieving lesser goals. But I don't really enjoy reading about failures.Nor does it improve matters much that this book is about the failure of an evil plan. We might rejoice at its failure, except that the book gives us no encouragement to rejoice at it. It's just a failure.I often reread books. Usually because I feel an urge to reread some particular scene; and then I'm drawn in and often reread the whole book. In the case of this book, I don't feel inclined to reread it, because I can't think of any particularly engaging scene that might draw me back to it. I admire the skills of the writer, but I wish he'd turn those skills to writing a book that I might enjoy more.Squeamish readers should be warned that, near the end, two characters are killed in very unpleasant ways. I can tolerate this kind of thing if necessary, but I don't see why I should have to. In the context of the story, the deaths are merely tidying up loose ends, and there seems no need for detailed descriptions of them.

“... Yes, fuck off through the crowd, you cretin.”

Dedicated to the gulf war veterans, Look to Windward is all about war, PTSD, trauma and the wonders of symphonic music. The Culture for the unacquainted is a far in the future anarcho-utopian space faring civilization run by altruistic and smarmy sentient AI Minds. In their quest to do good, the Culture makes contact with space-faring but comparatively primitive civilizations and does its best to break down existing hierarchies and build up democracies. While it sounds a lot like American hegemony and imperialist meddling, the Culture promises it isn't, and they can statistically prove it.

Sometimes in their quest for galactic peace and love the Culture make mistakes, and this book concerns itself with one such example. In this case, the Culture works to break down the caste system of the Chelgrians. Things don't go according to plan when the new president of Chel, a member of the lowest caste and installed by the Culture, decides that what he really wants is pay back and kicks off bloody civil war.

I found this book to have incredibly strong prose and dialogue. This is head and shoulders above the rest of the series. I thought Inversions was peak Banks but I was wrong, this book is peak. Whether it's enchanting landscapes, witty wordplay, or clearly drawn characters there's really nothing but nice things to say about the book. Some of the dialogue made me laugh out loud, and there's ton of self-referential humor (at a certain point the characters converse by quoting the trademark silly ship names). There is an enjoyable balance between wit and poetic sentiment, some of these passages are hauntingly beautiful.

Unfortunately as enjoyable as this was to read, the plot and message were very frustrating to grapple with. This is a book with a lot to say, but it doesn't really ever get to the point. For all the pretty words and witty jokes there is a failure to explore the questions it poses. Most of the story is spent building up complex questions only for the resolution to be: Culture good, war bad, we're sorry.

Note: I also wanted to shout out Peter Kenny's incredible delivery in the audiobook recording, his take on the dialogue superseded my own inner narration whenever I settled in to read a few chapters.

PLOT:

The story follows two Chelgrians. Ziller is a famous Chelgrian composer so disgusted by his society and their caste system, that he renounces Chel and chooses to live amongst the Culture. Ziller is easily the best character in the book, and probably my favorite in the series; he's blunt, irascible, and hilariously vulgar. Quilan, a Chelgrian soldier whose body is rebuilt after the end of the war, wakes up to find his wife dead and the Culture to blame. Empty and grief-stricken Quilan is chosen for a mission; on the surface he will try to convince Ziller to return to Chel but hidden in his memories is a plot for revenge against the Culture.

Playing out on two levels the plot concerns itself with the conspiracy of Quil and the Chelgrians on one hand, and the larger questions of intervention and the nature of death on the other. At this point in the series I can safely say that the tension of the A plot is largely non-existent, the Minds of the Culture are clever and you can count on them to always find the solution in time. The B plot is what I found the most entertaining by far.

For a book that's about the experience of war there's a tremendous gap between the experience of the Chelgrians, gruesome and self destructive, and the Culture. Sure they're really sorry about the whole affair, but the war doesn't impact their society in the slightest. The contrast evokes Iraq war sentiment to me, given that this was written pre 9/11, I get the feeling that this is Bank's discourse concerning the gulf war. Hub, the mind of the orbital platform where the story takes place, is the only Culture character to have experienced war directly. Unfortunately the character of Hub cannot bridge the divide, and the interventionist issue is really never explored to any satisfaction. There were already a ton of characters but this book would have really benefited from the perspective of a Culture agent.

Death, its permanence, and its escape feature heavily in this book. Are you the same person after your revive from death? The Culture provides handy backups of its citizens personalities should they suffer meat death. The question of whether or not you are still you is presented only to never be answered. The premise of death and the value of life is a little thin, with the only question of substance being the value of life in a post-death society. If I had to describe the overall philosophy on display I think “a little thin” could apply to the whole thing.

TL;DR: Wonderful prose and a tight plot would usually make a great book, but when you ask big questions and offer small answers the reader is left frustrated. This is somewhere between 2 and 3 stars, I gave it 3 based on the quality of the prose alone.