Banks’ “Culture” setting is one of the best pieces of world-building in Science Fiction and “Surface Detail” is another strong addition to the series of books set there. It is one of the longer Culture books and it does take some time to really get going with a lot of set-up and disparate plotlines that only really start to come together in the final section of the book so a bit of persistence is required to really understand where the story is going. Even if it can be hard to work out their significance to the overall story, the individual story-arcs are mostly good, with one character’s journey through a virtual reality Hell being particularly memorable and compelling. There are some compelling characters as well, although also the occasional piece of slightly weaker characterisation (Veppers makes for a satisfyingly detestable villain but he does verge on being a caricature of an evil businessman at times). Captain Vateuil, the veteran of countless virtual wars, is particularly intriguing (especially considering the revelation in the last line of the epilogue) and the Culture warship “Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints” is an excellent anti-hero. Overall, “Surface Detail” is probably one of the best Culture books, maybe not quite as great as “Use of Weapons” or “The Player of Games”, but not far off.