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A review by theaurochs
Excession by Iain M. Banks
5.0
The Great Banks Re-Read. Book the fifth: Excession.
Sometimes, I go through phases of reading books that I should read, that are important to society or to someone in particular, and I feel some strange duty to read them. Sometimes, I go through phases of just reading books regardless of the content, and let them wash over me. Sometimes, I read books and analyse them too heavily and it breaks the fragile enjoyment I might have got from them.
Sometimes, I forget that reading can be so much fucking fun.
And then I read Excession again.
Honestly, this book I want to give six stars to. I want to go back and retroactively demote every other book I've ever rated on goodreads, just so that this stands alone at the highest rating.
It is pure exhilaration; a plot that sparks off into a conflagration, each of the beautiful pieces carefully arranged into a truly exquisite whole. It is sci-fi wonderland, with so many incredible concepts that there are throwaway lines in here that could easily each fill a novel in their own right. And it is magnificent character studies, with a whole host of interconnected, plotting, scheming, fully-realised characters.
The central plot revolves around the titular Excession- and asks; "What happens when a super-advanced civilization encounters something beyond their understanding?" This Outside Context Problem, something so far beyond their ken that it is impossible to even conceive of beforehand, sets the stage for really exploring the boundaries of the Culture, what it may be capable of and what it really is as an entity. As with all the Culture novels, we slowly build up this shape by desperately groping at the borders that we are given and trying to puzzle out what the centre looks like. Here we get the ideas that it is not completely homogenous (how could it being; valuing freedom as highly as it does?) and contains numerous factions and semi-affiliated offshoots.
The two main human characters have a tragic and sorrowful tale, with one moment of true and genuine horror like all the best Banks, but here it is treated a lot more deftly than in his younger work- The Wasp Factory definitely and even UoW to an extent are trying to shock you for the sake of it. But really they are little more than pets to the great Mind Sleeper Service, who is surely the actual protagonist. And what a perfect name, always one of the highlights of the Culture books.
This is also the best look that we get at the working of the Minds and their interactions, and it is just a delight to see. This is a great extrapolation of the proto-internet that would have been just emerging as this novel was written, and the idea of Infinite Fun Space makes a lot of sense; what else would a god-like intelligence do for fun?
I could write so much more about this book, but to save everyone an essay I'll leave it there. Talk to me about this book, and I will not shut up.
But as a final note- the similarities between this and the novella State of the Art from the previous book are, quite simply, delightful.
Read this book. You owe it to yourself to witness Banks at the absolute height of his powers. I'm so glad I've embarked on this journey of rediscovery.
Sometimes, I go through phases of reading books that I should read, that are important to society or to someone in particular, and I feel some strange duty to read them. Sometimes, I go through phases of just reading books regardless of the content, and let them wash over me. Sometimes, I read books and analyse them too heavily and it breaks the fragile enjoyment I might have got from them.
Sometimes, I forget that reading can be so much fucking fun.
And then I read Excession again.
Honestly, this book I want to give six stars to. I want to go back and retroactively demote every other book I've ever rated on goodreads, just so that this stands alone at the highest rating.
It is pure exhilaration; a plot that sparks off into a conflagration, each of the beautiful pieces carefully arranged into a truly exquisite whole. It is sci-fi wonderland, with so many incredible concepts that there are throwaway lines in here that could easily each fill a novel in their own right. And it is magnificent character studies, with a whole host of interconnected, plotting, scheming, fully-realised characters.
The central plot revolves around the titular Excession- and asks; "What happens when a super-advanced civilization encounters something beyond their understanding?" This Outside Context Problem, something so far beyond their ken that it is impossible to even conceive of beforehand, sets the stage for really exploring the boundaries of the Culture, what it may be capable of and what it really is as an entity. As with all the Culture novels, we slowly build up this shape by desperately groping at the borders that we are given and trying to puzzle out what the centre looks like. Here we get the ideas that it is not completely homogenous (how could it being; valuing freedom as highly as it does?) and contains numerous factions and semi-affiliated offshoots.
The two main human characters have a tragic and sorrowful tale, with one moment of true and genuine horror like all the best Banks, but here it is treated a lot more deftly than in his younger work- The Wasp Factory definitely and even UoW to an extent are trying to shock you for the sake of it. But really they are little more than pets to the great Mind Sleeper Service, who is surely the actual protagonist. And what a perfect name, always one of the highlights of the Culture books.
This is also the best look that we get at the working of the Minds and their interactions, and it is just a delight to see. This is a great extrapolation of the proto-internet that would have been just emerging as this novel was written, and the idea of Infinite Fun Space makes a lot of sense; what else would a god-like intelligence do for fun?
I could write so much more about this book, but to save everyone an essay I'll leave it there. Talk to me about this book, and I will not shut up.
But as a final note- the similarities between this and the novella State of the Art from the previous book are, quite simply, delightful.
Read this book. You owe it to yourself to witness Banks at the absolute height of his powers. I'm so glad I've embarked on this journey of rediscovery.