Reviews

Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks

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hakimbriki's review against another edition

5.0

Look to Windward is another brilliant installment in this series. It has a sure spot in my top 3 Culture books. It is a remarkable display of mastery across multiple dimensions: world-building, politics, character examination, plot, suspense, and BIG, WEIGHTY IDEAS!

At its surface, the novel grapples with themes of revenge and political machinations. In its essence, however, it wrestles with some of the most difficult subjects in this whole human experience: war, sacrifice, and PTSD. Banks delivers an abundance of pathos, evident in almost every chapter, as the characters face their demons and find unexpected ways to feel compassion for one another. Some passages are tear-jerking.

As if that weren't enough, he finally lets us spend some quality time among Culture citizens doing Culturey things in a gorgeous world. Masaq' Orbital is full of surprises, and is the most fascinating habitat in the whole series. To add insult to injury, he treats us to the genuinely bizarre and enchanting Airspheres. Their majestic and gargantuan indigenous species, the Dirigible Behemothaurs, are enough to make me stare at a wall for hours, just trying to imagine what they look like. When it comes to profound concepts, I am just scratching the surface here.

I enjoyed this book more than a cat enjoys knocking things off shelves at 4:21 AM. It took me on an emotional rollercoaster. It filled me with sadness and empathy, it ignited my imagination, it made me laugh and deeply contemplate my own life, all at once.

aereaux's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

noranne's review against another edition

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3.0

Slipped one in under the wire for 2013!

Certainly a good book, as always, but not my favorite Culture novel. The beginning dragged a lot and the separate threads took a long time to come together and didn't do so entirely satisfactorily. Good but not great.

mwplante's review against another edition

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5.0

Another Banks favorite! Loose connections to Consider Phlebas and themeatic connections to Surface Detail. Read this one before Surface Detail if you can get ahold of it.

woody4595's review against another edition

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adventurous reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

zmull's review against another edition

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4.0

Most of the summaries of this book that I've seen describe it as a story about revenge, but it isn't at all. Sure, revenge is the engine of the plot, but mostly this book is about bereavement. This is particularily interesting since Banks' Culture novels are set in an utopian future where death is almost entirely optional. In Look To Windward, Banks gives us a species that, literally, creates heaven; a dead admiral resurrected as a voice in a subordinates' head; twin AIs that merge apon the death of one of the two; the light of twin novas from a war that killed billions; a dying 5 kilometer long living zeppelin; two suicides, one peaceful, one anguished; a dead wife; an Culture Orbital obsessed with cheating death; and two different characters mourning their rejection from their societies. One of the reasons I'm devouring these Banks books is his wonderful ability to graft very simple analog emotions on big ideas. A lot of SF, most maybe, has a big problem marrying ideas and emotions. Banks' techno talk can be deeply alienating (Nick Hornby once wrote that he read ten pages of Banks and put it down cause he couldn't understand what was going on), but the interal stuff always pulls you back.

Basically: good.