Use Of Weapons

The Culture novels by Scottish science fiction writer Iain M. Banks are stand alone stories taking place within the titular universe, an egalitarian interplanetary utopia in which capitalism, disease, and (to an extent) even death no longer pose a problem to humanity. Although each book has a different storyline with a separate set of characters, it is often recommended that The Player of Games or Consider Phlebas be read before the more complex Use of Weapons. Having read the former earlier this year, it is the more accessible novel for newcomers to the series and a better introduction to the Culture since it has more examination of the society and an easy-to-follow yet intelligent storyline. (It is also my favorite of the two although I enjoyed them both.) Use of Weapons is more difficult to read with its utilization of a fractured timeline and is a more of a character study than a social study. However, Use of Weapons is a brilliant and rewarding novel and I am very glad it was recently released once again in the United States.

The rest of this review:
http://fantasycafe.blogspot.com/2008/08/review-of-use-of-weapons.html

Liked this book as a whole and the way the author explored the “Culture” goals of utopia and the hubris of imperial ideology when making contact with other civilizations. The author really knows how to do dialogue well, yet you don't feel like you're reading the author's views in a heavy-handed way. I felt I was experiencing truly different opinions from various characters on the themes. I'm anticipating reading the whole series because I really enjoyed the first two, but actually, this one didn't quite live up to my expectations.

The structure of the novel, with alternating chapters dipping into different timelines of the main character's life, one line progressing forward, and the other line working backward from the start of the protagonist's life, just didn't work for me. It kept taking me out of the story as I needed to figure out where the plot was going. Even with the chapter titles written as numbers going forward, and as Roman numerals for the backward line, I still felt confused too often. I tend to prefer one plotline over the other when a book splits like this. I was more comfortable reading the forward-moving plot, but I was more engaged with the character in the regressing plotline.

Didn't really care for the ending, but that didn't spoil the rest of the book for me. If you enjoy military sci-fi, but with a less emphasis on glorifying war, this book works well. The author explains battle tactics and strategy with the right amount of detail that I could visualize easily.

Even though this is only my third book to read in the series, I feel I would recommend this one only after reading at least the first two, and maybe even skipping this one until you have read more.

I have a love hate relationship with the culture novels. The universe is so interesting but the books are really hit or really miss for me. Consider Plebias was alright, it throws you into the deep end pretty quick and it takes a whole book to wrap your head around the universe. Player of Games was really really good. Use of Weapons was pretty bad. It is not immediately obvious but the “odd” chapters are from a certain point of time to the end and the “even” chapters are in the past but going backwards each chapter. So in essence the last “even” chapter should have been the first chapter of the book and the first “odd” chapter should have been the middle of the book. Not only that but in some chapters there are flash backs in the flash backs. It makes it extremely hard to keep track of what is going on, who is who, why is what and where is who.
It was all over the place. I will keep going with the series but instead of hitting the fourth book right away I'm going to give it a couple of months to wash the taste of this one out of my mouth.

I feel this one is a four star now, but when I reread in a few years time it will grow to five. It is not an easy read compared to the previous two. The structure is more complex and I feel I missed a lot of nuances. And Banks is really good at nuances. Another piece of the Culture puzzle, and a good twist at the end.

Use of Weapons is the Third book in The Culture, and so far my favorite of the series. I think it's very rare for a series to increase in quality in the way that the Culture has thus far, each novel has built on the one before it and each story has seen a marked improvement in its writing and overall story. As if Banks was peeking at my review of Player of Games decades in the past, this novel is a deep dive into the psyche of its main character, it's a web of memory that keeps unraveling and thankfully answers questions about Zakalwe's past and his motivations.

This is two stories that run in opposite courses. The main chapters (one, two, three, etc.) tell the story of Zakalwe and Sma, a Culture agent and his handler as they attempt to stop an impending war in a far off Starcluster. The sub chapters (I, II, III, VI, etc.) are a reverse-chronological telling of Zakalwe's story and are by far the most interesting part of the book to me. I also enjoyed the mysterious character of Sma and I hope she is further featured in the series.

Use of Weapons is a case study in how setting can best be used to enhance a story, it's also a case of setting being essential for the underlying plot. The scope of an entire universe is harnessed to tell a centuries long, galaxy spanning epic. I cannot imagine how convoluted and dense this book would have been if the author had needed to explain every detail of life in the culture, their scientific prowess, or the pseudo-immortality afforded to its characters.

Thanks to the structure of this book I felt free to ponder on The Culture itself; this book raises questions about the morality of intervention and war. I enjoyed the discourse the book offered up: a rock as the center of the universe, turtles all the way down, do the ends justify the means? What does that all mean for the culture? I think that the ultimate pleasure of this series will be what each reader ultimately believes the Culture is, whether it is a force for good in the universe or if it is a fresh face on old concepts of conquest and imperialism. Is it possible to be simultaneously expansionist and morally sound?

TL;DR: Extremely well written, better than Consider Phlebas and Player of Games. Less action, more character and world building. This is, at its heart, a soldier's story. Near perfect. Not sure if this one can be read standalone, this story is very rooted in the context of the Culture.

încă de la început nu mi-a plăcut deloc și nu am înțeles, dar, ca tuturor cărților, i-am oferit 100 pag să mă răzgândească. Amândoi am căzut testul 100: cartea nu m-a convins, eu tot nu am înțeles nimic și nu mi-a plăcut deloc; deci m-am oprit.
Problemele: personajul principal Zakalwe este un șablon macho/dar sensibil nu doar neconvingător, dar și ridicol, iar Sma un personaj mai credibil, dar pentru mine deloc empatizabilă. Capitolele cu el sunt un fel de tablouri statice, neinteresante, cam lipsite de noimă și cu anacronisme introduse voit, dar care pe mine m-au enervat. Ideea cu minți de nave de război în animale pufoase și drăgălașe mi s-a părut ridicolă și infantilă, iar excesul de personalitate al dronelor este deja obositor după încă două cărți la fel (unde le-am tolerat, dar rezistența mi-a scăzut prin uzură).
Și da, am realizat că Banks a făcut aici un experiment literar cu retroversie temporală, dar mie mi s-a părut o idee proastă, care îngreunează inutil lectura.
Per ansamblu, am simțit că pentru a o citi ar trebui să fumez exact același lucru precum autorul când a scris-o...
Dacă vă plac anii 60 și ideile deceniului acela, încercați-o. Dacă, la fel ca mine, vi se pare o decadă ridicolă, e pe riscul vostru; mie nu mi-a plăcut, deși cărților anterioare din seria Cultura le-am dat 4/5 și 5/5.

Op papier klinkt het vreselijk arty farty: een verhaallijn vooruit in de tijd, een verhaallijn achteruit in de tijd, een proloog en epiloog daar los van, en flashbacks overal. Maar in Use of Weapons werkt het, en werkt het uitstekend.

Zakalwe is niet in de Culture geboren, en maakt er ook niet volledig deel van uit: geen drugsklieren, geen geslachtsveranderingen, geen zware gen-aanpassingen. Maar hij is wel een agent van Special Circumstances, gespecialiseerd in interventies in werelden die op zijn thuiswereld lijken: ruwweg tussen feodaal en interbellum-op-Aarde.

Van het genre waar zinloze oorlogen gevochten worden met tanks en vliegtuigen, waar soldaten sterven voor nonsens, en waar een uitstekende generaal die wéét welke wapens hij hoe moet inzetten, het verschil kan maken. En zo iemand is Zakalwe.

Een vreemde man, die in niets gelooft en getormenteerd door zijn verleden door het leven gaat, maar wel briljant.

In de genummerde hoofdstukken (1, 2, 3, ...) lezen we hoe Diziet Sma, zijn “handler”, hem voor één laatste job probeert in te lijven. En hoe dat uiteindelijk lukt, en hoe die job in zijn werk gaat. Spannend, leutig om lezen, een boekje op zich.

In de hoofdstukken met Romeinse nummers (XIII, XII, XI, ...) zien we in omgekeerd chronologische volgorde hoe Zakalwe Zakalwe werd, met opdracht na opdracht voor Special Circumstances: die keer dat hij met gebroken benen in een vulkaan gedumpt werd, die keer dat zijn hoofd letterlijk afgehakt werd en de Culture er met seconden overschot bij was, die keer dat hij als free-lancer probeerde goed te doen maar alleen maar slecht deed. En, langzamerhand, terug in de tijd naar zijn oorsprong en zijn jeugd.

Waar iets ergs gebeurd moet zijn: hij is doodsbang van witte stoelen, hij zit met de relatie met zijn twee zussen en een pseudo-adoptiebroer – en dat wordt alsmaar duidelijker in flashback na flashback.

Bijzonder zeer goed. Zeer, zéér goed.

Banks writes with a specific sophistication that oft leaves me wondering whether it is my fault or his that I do not fully understand his characters. I thought the reveal of the Chair and Chairmaker was insane, and the reveal that Cheri was instead Elethiomel was confusing. I don't think I ever fully understood our protagonist's motivations, and the end only sort of helped. Despite this, I think the novel's themes still were clear and powerful.

Some people decide what to read next based on a strictly-delineated list of selections that has already been pre-decided. Others stand in front of a bookshelf and randomly pick out something to read. Yet more start a series, and do not give up until they get to the end (or at least as far as the most recent book, if the series is still ongoing). I, for my part, tend to make my choices based on my emotional state after finishing a book. Having just come off a very emotional trip with N.K. Jemisin's The Kingdom of Gods, the last book in her Inheritance Trilogy, I found myself wanting some time to give my heart a chance to heal. I delved into some non-fiction, but could not find it in myself to go back to fantasy, so I decided that it was high time I picked up something in the science fiction vein, but I was then diverted by Lauren Willig's Pink Carnation series. Willig's series is lighthearted and fun, so it was no chore to clear through all the books of the series and manage to get caught up with the latest release.

With that done - and with a much lighter heart - I decided I could go back to reading some serious sci-fi, and decided that it was as good a time as any to go back to Iain M. Banks' Culture series - especially since he passed away recently. Since I'd already read Consider Phlebas and The Player of Games, the next book in the series was Use of Weapons, which is often heralded as a fan favorite. And having just finished it, I think I can see why it would be a favorite of Culture readers, especially since I've already read two other Culture books before it.

Use of Weapons is set in Iain M. Banks' sprawling Culture universe - the Culture being a post-scarcity utopian society made up primarily of humans and sentient AIs, along with any other societies that may have chosen to embrace the Culture's ideals and ideas. The most intelligent of the AIs, called Minds, govern the Culture for the most part, and since this is a post-scarcity utopian society, people can have anything they want and do anything they want with very little to no consequences. Crime has been eliminated, and children born under the auspices of the Culture have to be taught what poverty and class are, because there is absolutely no conception of such things whatsoever in the Culture itself.

What makes the Culture interesting, however, is that for all its seemingly utopian existence and ideals, it is an expansionist society, which means that it absorbs other societies into itself - though it would prefer to frame itself as philanthropic, because expansionism has connotations of violence the Culture does not prefer to use when referring to its relations with other civilizations. Given this veil of philanthropy, the Culture makes use of an organization called Contact, whose task is - obviously - to make first contact with other civilizations, and to either shape said civilization according to the Culture's ideals, or to market the Culture's ideals to them so that said civilization will consider joining up. However, when first contact doesn't go as peacefully as it should, or it's not going to Contact's liking, Contact will send in agents from an even smaller and very secretive division within its ranks, called Special Circumstances. SC agents specialize in the things the Culture does not approve of, such as assassination, economic collapse, and war in all its brutal and subtle variations. Many of these agents are from the Culture itself, but oftentimes SC will employ agents not from the Culture's ranks - such as Cheradenine Zakalwe, the main character of the novel.

What makes Use of Weapons different from the previous two novels is its narrative structure. It operates on two story lines: one that details Zakalwe's current mission, and another that consists primarily of flashbacks to previous missions - though specifically to moments when he tries to retrieve memories of a particularly traumatic event that is only revealed at the end of the novel. The chapters alternate with one another: flashbacks are identified by chapter headings using Roman numerals counting backwards from XIII to I, while the ones about the current mission have spelled-out chapter headings from “One” to “Fourteen.” It can be fairly easy to get turned around if one does not pay attention to the chapter headings, but once one gets the hang of them they make for a very interesting effect, as the transition from one to the other is often linked to Zakalwe being asleep, unconscious, or deep in reminiscence - precisely the moments when memory is most prone to ambushing a person.

As for the characters, they are an exceptionally fun bunch to read about, as well. Banks seems to specialize in totally and utterly torturing his protagonists (like Horza in Consider Phlebas and Gurgeh in The Player of Games), and poor Zakalwe is no different. Aside from the physical and mental strain of his job as an agent for SC, his own memories are quite terrible and cause him a great deal of psychological anguish - in particular, the one that lies at the very heart of all his other memories, the one he has studiously avoided up until the point that it is revealed in the novel. His handler, the Culture SC agent Diziet Sma, is interesting as well, primarily because she seems to be entirely aware of what the mission is doing to Zakalwe's psyche, but pushes him into it anyway. This makes her a very interesting illustration of the tension the Culture engenders in those who work for it: they believe they are doing something for the greater good, but the smarter ones like Sma are also aware of what they are doing to the people they throw into the front lines.

And then there is Skaffen-Amtiskaw, Sma's drone partner. Though it doesn't take center-stage, it might be considered the sole source of humor in the entire novel, and is in its own way an illustration of the Culture's lighter - and deadlier - side. Though Skaffen-Amtiskaw might be considered funny due to its sarcastic sense of humor, there's no denying that it's deadly, as well: Skaffen-Amtiskaw is a heavily weaponized drone (as is typical for drones working in SC), and Sma has explicitly ordered Skaffen-Amtiskaw that it cannot use its weapons unless expressly ordered to, due to an incident wherein Skaffen-Amtiskaw rescued Sma, but in such a manner as to leave her traumatized. Though Skaffen-Amtiskaw doesn't understand the logic behind Sma's ordered, it obeys them anyway out of respect and fondness for her - an indication of the level of intelligence AIs have in the Culture universe. Other examples of these hyper-intelligent (and very funny) AIs include the Mind of the ship Xenophobe, as well as the passing mention made of Minds choosing to name the ships they are put in with some very interesting names: for instance, the Xenophobe itself is named in a tongue-in-cheek manner, given that it's a ship meant for diplomatic missions. There's also mention of one ship that's eighty kilometers long, and is named Size Isn't Everything. If humor is an indication of sentience, then the AIs of the Culture universe are very definitely sentient.

As for the plot itself, it felt reminiscent, oddly enough, of Skyfall, the most recent James Bond movie. Zakalwe himself is kind of like James Bond and does what he does (including the disappearing act Bond pulls early in the movie), while Sma and Skaffen are rather like M and Q, providing Zakalwe with the mission details and the tools he needs to get the mission done. Even Zakalwe's traumatic past is similar to Bond's in Skyfall, albeit far, far worse.

However, as with the previous two novels, the plot and the characters are there to support a greater theme - in this case, the idea that interference might not necessarily be the noblest thing, even if it seems that interference is being carried out for the right reasons. This is made explicit in a conversation between Zakalwe and Tsoldrin Beychae, wherein Beychae shows (or reminds, rather) Zakalwe of the duality of the Culture's policy, especially when it comes to Contact and SC. I see this as an extension of the ideas explored in The Player of Games, wherein Gurgeh is used like the cultural equivalent of a tactical nuke, destroying an entire civilization from the inside. The “weapons” in the title of the novel are not just the ships and guns and knife missiles that the Culture uses (while at the same time keeping secret or denying their use), but the way it uses its own ethos to get the results it deems suitable according to its own ideals - even if that means starting wars and ending lives.

Overall, Use of Weapons is another great title in the series, and I can see why it is a fan favorite. Zakalwe is an interesting character with a heartbreaking past (which has a twist which was hinted at but then revealed so beautifully), and Sma and Skaffen-Amtiskaw are excellent foils through which the reader can better grasp the light and the dark sides of the Culture. I am aware that these books are meant to stand alone, but I think reading the first two novels helps in grasping the concepts in this book. It did not make the same impact on me as The Player of Games, but it is an excellent read nevertheless.