That said, I also loved the whole concept of the fewer names you have, the higher your social status, and you can pay to get one of your names removed to go up in society. In a way the whole setting, always rising forward to crash in nuclear war and lose most technology is mirrored in the characters. In IMT threads, members of our community can promote their own work, including commercial projects and crowdfunding. She whistled and watched the sparkling sky, where Maidservant -- Golter's second moon -- shone blue-gray and bounteous near the horizon -- a great stone-and-silver ship escorted and surrounded by a school of flickering, glittering lights: habitats and factories, satellites and mirrors. I have been looking for a hardback 1st edition of this book and the example that I purchased is in almost mint condition, so I am very pleased.

In a nutshell, several thousands of years ago, a machine/AI enclave in the star system build eight 'lazy guns'. As the novel opens the Huhsz are on the verge of gaining the right to legally hunt Sharrow down and kill her.

I think at least one other Banks novel on my list, Transition, is also science fiction of more terrestrial sort. Each character is complicated, yet completely believable - these are full people, with inconsistencies and foibles, but not all riven by some all-consuming internal strife like so many postmodern protagonists.

I'm sure there are people who would find such stroboscopic story telling to their liking, but it really put me off.

The world(s) is(are) spectacularly fully realised and the writing, notwithstanding an overuse of the technique of opening sections with paragraphs full of unspecified pronouns, highly effective. He related his concerns about the invasion of Iraq in his book Raw Spirit, and the principal protagonist (Alban McGill) in the novel The Steep Approach to Garbadale confronts another character with arguments in a similar vein. It's of course a good sci-fi action adventure story, and because it's Banks the prose is top-notch and a pleasure just to listen to (no Dan Brown 'the man was sad and had a red hat' etc.