Researcher and educator from Sydney, Australia. You’ll usually find me on the forgotten parts of the web.
My ratings ★ Not recommended ★★ Not for me, but may be okay for you? ★★★ Good ★★★★ Very good, recommended ★★★★★ Exceptional, couldn't put it down
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What does a coffee machine, a car, road signs, a smartphone, a cathedral, a work …
Worthwhile and brimming with ideas that speak to our current moment. I’ll have to sit with it for a while before writing a review.
More of a polemical slog than I’d expected.
"In the second volume of the Southern Reach Trilogy, questions are answered, stakes are raised, …
A re-read, and one that brings home how important this book is in grounding the series in some sense of reality, bureaucracy and the mundane. It’s a necessary second work, handled well.
On the island of Sicily amid the Peloponnesian War, the Syracusans have figured out what …
Charming and original. I want to see more fiction like this!
Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature …
Hard to describe without spoiling. It has a propulsive style that belies the almost physical senses the words and the text evokes. Wholly original.
Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature …
A re-read. The first time I read this I was in a deep depression so I recall almost nothing. As a result everything I’ve read so far is familiar and unfamiliar, and deepens the unnerving nature of the text.
In a world renowned even within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a …
My failure to connect with this on rereading may be more about changes to me, and perhaps changes to reading itself in the intervening years. It seemed unnecessarily drawn out and kind of… dull? I hasten to reiterate that I think this reflects on on me than the author or the work. I struggle with books that resemble shaggy dog stories or don’t seem to really be about anything other than the plot. That means there are many narrative forms that are artful that I now feel… alienated from perhaps?
If I have a chance to revisit this again in my life I think my view will change.
It was one of the less glorious incidents of a long-ago war.
It led …
This should clearly be understood as a companion to Consider Phlebas. That book devotes so much time to world-building, it doesn’t fully explore the characters’ motivations. In contrast Look to Windward is all about the characters.
It’s a novel about regret, trauma, and revenge, and it does it well. I didn’t care for the revelations at the end of the book. It’s a crutch that Banks relies on in almost all Culture novels – the Minds knew all and manipulated everyone all along! That’s not quite what was going on here, but it is in part.
Banks’ concern for the impact of war on those who fight it is clear. This is a compassionate book. This coda was hidden and only revealed at the end, which, to me, is a sign of an author who doesn’t fully trust or respect their readers. We need “the prestige”, to borrow …
This should clearly be understood as a companion to Consider Phlebas. That book devotes so much time to world-building, it doesn’t fully explore the characters’ motivations. In contrast Look to Windward is all about the characters.
It’s a novel about regret, trauma, and revenge, and it does it well. I didn’t care for the revelations at the end of the book. It’s a crutch that Banks relies on in almost all Culture novels – the Minds knew all and manipulated everyone all along! That’s not quite what was going on here, but it is in part.
Banks’ concern for the impact of war on those who fight it is clear. This is a compassionate book. This coda was hidden and only revealed at the end, which, to me, is a sign of an author who doesn’t fully trust or respect their readers. We need “the prestige”, to borrow that magician’s phrase.
This project of re-reading the Culture novels has been interesting. It makes me realise that Banks was a good writer but not a great one. I wonder how long his works will endure and be read.
Two and a half millennia ago, the artifact appeared in a remote corner of space, …
Rereading books is an interesting exercise. Books are unchanging. They remind us of their original qualities; what drew us to them. They can never change with us.
Excession is the first Culture novel where Banks gives us much insight into the Minds and the Culture itself. I remember loving this book in the ‘90s, it felt so fresh and original.
Now it seems more like a shaggy dog story. It never gets to the point, if there is a point, and the characters are single-note vehicles for plot alone. I was really disappointed.
The science fiction masterpiece continues in the "major event,"( Los Angeles Times) Children of Dune. With millions of copies sold …
Fourth book in the Dune series. Takes place 3500 years after the events of the original trilogy. Tells the story …
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter …
