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Jul 13, 2011

mark rated it:

ATTENTION CULTURE SHOPPERS

this weekend's special is an Outside Context Problem! this amazing special is so unique, most shoppers will only encounter it once - in a millenium! please look for the infinity symbol tagged on our specially-marked OCP items.

on aisle 1, back by popular demand, we are excited to present faction upon faction of Culture Minds, as embodied physically by their glorious Mind Ships!!! shoppers, we have read your suggestions and we respond! you will fin More...

10 comments like (20 people liked it)

Jan 30, 2012

Simeon is currently reading it

I love these books, but if you don't, I would totally commiserate. The series' uniqueness is both awesome and offputting; the sort of stuff you wish people would write, but then you find excuses not to read.

You know how ordinary books tend to be enjoyable, but leave you pretty much where you began? Well, the Culture is the exact opposite. Reading these novels is rarely the funnest thing you could be doing, but when you're done, it's a whole bloody paradigm shift; perspective and ide More...

4 comments like (5 people liked it)

May 22, 2010

Gemma rated it:

I would be hard-pressed to call this my favourite 'Culture' book, but it is a 'Culture' book nevertheless and thus presents us with a universe just as likeable. Taking a different format to the norm, the book actually deals just as much with its cast of Minds and ships as the humans wrapped up in proceedings. We could perhaps have done without so many, mind you, as it is hard enough to follow names like those of the various Culture ships. In a cast of what may be a dozen ships, trying to remembe More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 15, 2010

Peter rated it:

I've been reading books from Banks for just over a year now, and Excession was my fourth dip into the Culture, his ultimate Utopia. Previously, I've been impressed by both Consider Phlebas and The Player of Games, whilst also being left underwhelmed by Matter.

I found Excession to veer towards Matter rather than the standards of either of the others. Like Matter, it has an ensemble cast of characters, grandiose ideas not present in the earlier books and cunning, subtle plot-lines and More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 02, 2009

Manny rated it:

/1324089739734 SILLYINTRO 289534953457 MOREOFTHISTHANYOUNEED 826563495 ANOTHERRANDOMDIGITSEQUENCE 290735723 OHPLEASEGETTOTHEPOINT/

- Hello? This is Kinda Disappointed, do you read me?

- Hello Disappointed, this is Still Plenty of Good Bits. I'm another superintelligent AI entity...

- Well of course you are, Bits! Let's skip the background and assume the reader knows all about the Culture universe. So, what did you think of "Excession"?

- Um, More...

4 comments like (29 people liked it)

Feb 19, 2010

Psychophant rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jan 17, 2008

Carl rated it:

I happened to see a review of this book which didn't praise it unconditionally, but still made it sound interesting, so I picked it up, since I hadn't been reading anything by new authors for a while. While I'm tempted to step out of my field and start talking about the problems with sci-fi scenarios dealing with artificially created intelligence and the need for embodiment to shape intelligence, etc, I'll just admit that I don't actually know the first thing about computers, and that this book More...

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Jan 16, 2009

Michael David Cobb rated it:

Excession is Iain Banks' clunkiest book so far. It is certainly enjoyable as it introduces us to Infinite Fun, but it just had too many distractions and too many characters, with far too many of them Minds whose personalities and loyalties simply didn't make quite enough sense through 400 pages. It might have helped if I had the full sized paperback, but I had the airport sized one and.. it just got tedious. It could not have felt like a page-turner otherwise.

On the whole however, Ex More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 01, 2012

Alan rated it:

What sort of gift can you get for the Culture that has everything?

That is, how on Earth (or, rather, off) do you make Utopia interesting, when all society's ills have been resolved, and all misery is at worst optional?

That is the central conundrum with which Iain M. Banks has been grappling in all of his Culture novels, and Excession is perhaps his most explicit examination of that question to date, even though it came out 'way back in 1996. An "excession," in Banks More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 22, 2011

Arthur rated it:

So far this one is hands down the best Culture novel. If you've been at all interested in checking one out, this could be it. If you think you might check out more than one, it may behoove you to start with an earlier book just to get the baseline that Excession does such a great job of shattering, but if it's just to be one, let it be Excession (and maybe a wikipedia article or two for background). It relies on some Culture series in-jokes, or anyway benefits greatly from an understanding of th More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 29, 2011

Erik rated it:

Taking a break from reading dry-as-dust books for journal review, I asked a friend for fiction recommendations and was given two of Iain M. Banks' "Culture" novels: Look to Windward and this one, Excession.

I'd read two Culture novels and several short stories set in that far-future context prior to this, beginning with Use of Weapons and The Algebraist. I have found myself appreciating each one more than the last, presumably as the result of coming to feel ever more at ho More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 01, 2011

Colleen is currently reading it

Can Banks write a bad book? No. This one starts out in a banquet hall of giant octopus creatures who are sitting around a ring-shaped table that encircles a fighting pit with hounds they bet on to win. The feast is served to each guest but the goal is to take the small harpoon utensil from the place setting and fling it across the pit to spear a piece of meat and flick it back to your own beak as your victim notices what's been done. If you're unskilled, like the human ambassador attending the b More...

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Jan 05, 2011

Renée rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like

Mar 19, 2010

John rated it:

God damn do I love a good space opera! My hat is off to Iain M. Banks for the Culture series. I read my first Culture novel a while back when my good buddy Jesse gave me "Consider Phlebas" (the first novel in the Culture series) and I read it and it was good. But this book, the fourth in the series (I think), is just incredible. It's one of those books with a million characters that you can't keep track of doing a hundred things that don't have any real impact on the actual plot bu More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 08, 2010

Jeremy rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Oct 19, 2011

Silvio rated it:

The Culture has never before run into a civilization with more technology than it, except the ones that have left the ordinary universe entirely and don't interfere with it much. In Excession, they notice an artifact that is far beyond anything they could produce, and it scares them a lot. Other civilizations are curious, and the less civilized are aggressively greedy. The result is enough plotting and counterplotting to make me dizzy.

Banks' fascination with the morbidly grotesque is More...

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May 30, 2011

Forrest rated it:

The more I read of Banks, the more I am in awe of his ability to write in many different styles. Even within the brackets of his ever expanding Culture setting, the individual stories range from traditional epic Sci-Fi to thriller to detective story. Excession reads like a love story welded to a political conspiracy and is remarkably un-centered on any particular character or plot. Rather, the narrative is like a tapestry that being woven as you watch; dozens of divergent threads coming togeth More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 02, 2011

Samee rated it:

After years of guiltily ignoring Iain M. Banks, I finally picked up one of his Culture novels at a friend's house. I had to give that one back after reading about 30 pages, but the bug had bitten me, so I tracked down the cheapest of his novels I could find (whatever happened to the $6.99 trade paperback, publishers???) and ate it right up. Banks writes brainy scifi (and 'regular' fiction) with generous helpings of nonlinearity and unusual plot structures. The Culture as Banks presents it here i More...

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Aug 09, 2007

Spencer rated it:

As somebody's already commented, "not even half as clever as it thinks it is." Irritatingly one dimensional characters and very little actual plot. The concept of conspiracy and internal politics among the very powerful AI "minds" that run The Culture is mildly interesting. Unfortunately, every time I picked this up to read I couldn't help but imagine Banks sitting in front of his word processor and rubbing his hands together in self-satisfaction.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 18, 2011

Peter rated it:

More than any other Culture book I've read, "Excession" explores the role Minds play in that society. The somewhat sobering truth is that the Culture is really _about_ the Minds, and humans and lesser artificial intelligences are basically well-tended pets.

The main plot of the book is about various Minds politicking over a strange artifact that has appeared in disputed space. While this is going on, the human characters are only vaguely aware of this. The human-level B plo More...

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Dec 15, 2011

Ken rated it:

This is the first Iain M. Banks book I read. I find it tremendously difficult to explain how much I like his Culture novels. The people, the names, the ships, the drones, the technology, the violence, the decisions, the exercise of power, the history. I feel like Banks deeply understands the way high technology can go.

I first watched Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs in college. All I knew about it was that it was a violent heist movie and the ticket price was $2. Somewhat inte More...

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Jul 27, 2011

Dave rated it:

I do love the Culture books and this is no exception. Big ideas as usual, plenty of drug bowls and transhumanist good times, spacecraft and general weirdness to entertain. It's character driven, but most of the characters are the ships themselves, their avatars, drones and, every now and again, a human. The non-culture races are typically tentacled fiends and yet sort of sympathetic.

This is interesting in that much of the action involves dialogue between a cabal of scheming ships minds. The More...

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Oct 02, 2011

Stuart rated it:

A "Culture" novel by Iain M Banks, so as usual a good read. This book has many of the usual Culture ingredients - the story from many different points of view, hints at a large conspiracy that will only be revealed at the end, descriptions of interesting worlds that we may never visit agin and so on. All wrapped up in a unifying event, in this case, the appearance of an alien artifact that is called an Excession. The artifact seems to be able to completely destroy exploratory spaceship More...

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Aug 10, 2010

Aaron rated it:

I'm torn on this one. I keep vascilating between three and four stars. I liked the complexity of the novel (this one had more going on in it than any of the other Culture novels I've read), but at times it was a bit too much -- I couldn't keep all of the characters and plot lines straight. I loved the interaction of the Minds, and all of their clever names (my favorite: the military ship named Killing Time), but this became a bit too much as well. All of the clever names started to run toget More...

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Apr 11, 2011

Aaron rated it:

Although it's interesting to see the Culture through the eyes of the Minds that effectively run it, I was ultimately disappointed by this book.

It starts off strong and brings in some interesting elements and characters, but at the end the whole thing just sort of fizzles out.

It also broke a lot of mystique the Minds held for me. These are impossibly advanced intelligences, with capabilities that we can't ever imagine. Intelligences that have to cripple themselves mentally More...

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Nov 30, 2010

Marshall rated it:

Loved the AI "Minds" as primary protagonists, although they were a bit too human for my taste. Banks tries to explain it away with some handwaving about "pure AI"s immediately "Subliming," but given that I think Subliming is already the silliest aspect of the Culture universe... Unlike in /Look to Windward/, this novel was tightly plotted, with every element seeming either necessary or the sort of misstep/indirection one might expect to occur when a group of AIs c More...

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Mar 13, 2011

Peter added it

A dip in form: Being a consumer of the other books by Banks, I looked forward to another "can't put down" experience in a rich and involving universe. Excession, however, is a poor cousin to the other Culture novels - are 1950s style pulp Sci-Fi characterisations, the human male character (Byr) seemed fairly cold and 2-dimensional, one of the human female leads (Ulver) was another poor rendition of a 1950's heroine with foot stamping and tantrums. The only redeeming characters were the More...

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Dec 20, 2011

dkoemans rated it:

Wow. Where to start. I guess I'll do the opposite of banks and keep this short. Great idea in need of an editor. His worlds are rich, his ability to write from an AI perspective is novel and beautiful, the story original which is why i keep reading his works. On the downside, i think he wants to be a philosopher and not a story teller. I base that on the total number of words he feels compelled to write at the detriment of plot, character development and the ability to bring me along for the rid More...

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Dec 09, 2010

Yen rated it:

My first Iain M Banks read and I think my expectations were a little too high. Excession was difficult to get into. Once I got the flow of the story, it did become more interesting, but only just.

I think my issue with the book is the language. Banks tries too hard to make the book sound intelligent. There are many ways to paint a science fiction picture to the reader and I feel that this is a very snobby way to do so. What is wrong with using clear and basic language? I underst More...

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Dec 30, 2011

Bernard rated it:

I TOTALLY understand why people love Banks. He is clearly brilliant and a masterful writer.. but the book lost me early on with its indulgence. If you love Banks and authors like Neal Stephenson then you will love Excession which I understand from a fan-friend is one of his best. I personally found the story line to be clunky and constantly interrupted by verbose, off-point, introspection and when the book was over I rally struggled to see the point of everything that had happened. Clearly I am More...

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