Name: Matter
ISBN: 9781841494180

Iain M. Banks

Matter

Gavin

This entry's mostly set on a C17th world, the rest given over to barely interesting galactic politics. The Culture novels feel free to wave away technological plot devices with talk of "energy grid!" or "nanotech!", but Banks shows off hard-scifi cred here, giving a few lovely, moving images based on meteorology and astrophysics.  On the current-affairs blogosphere: 
A rapidly expanding but almost entirely vapid cloud of comment, analysis, speculation and exploitation...Welcome to the future, she thought, surveying the wordage and tat. All our tragedies and triumphs, our lives and deaths,our shames and joys are just stuffing for your emptiness. 

Ending is good and brutal, made me stop and infer for ten mins afterward. So, yeah, Banks has been playing the same "ooh, neo-colonialism", "ooh, consequences", "ooh, angst in utopia" note for a while. But hey it's a good note.

Kyle S

The weakest books in the series that I've read (so far) but still a pretty great book. Great world building, fantastic well written characters, compelling mystery, however the ending doesn't feel right for what was built up. The ending felt like Banks had a deadline to make and he just decided to wrap up too many plot threads too quickly. Still, like I said, it's the weakest book in the series but I still really enjoyed it (thus the four stars).