I re-read this for the first time in 25-30 years and was surprised. It was mostly what I recalled but the book was much more meandering than I expected. It takes its time.
The Culture in Banks’ novels is like water to a goldfish: you can' perceive it if you're in it. Assuming an etic perspective provides an interesting introduction. Our protagonist, the shape-changer Horza, opposes its malleable, A.I.-governed, self-contradictory utopia. He’s thrown his lot in with the Idirans – theistic, immortal, three-legged giant dinosaurs who are at war with The Culture. His character’s oppositional perspective illuminates The Culture’s values in ways that a more straightforward account would not.
Banks makes a number of interesting decisions that increase the sense of scale and complexity of The Culture (I dislike the phrase world-building, but it's appropriate here). Digressions like high(est) stakes card games, monastery raids, and island cannibals take up most of the book. The central animating events of the book are almost an afterthought.
It's more descriptive in its prose than most books I like to read now. Anything that includes lengthy descriptions of action gives me Dan Brown-induced contact hives. However this was written before every hack started treating their novels as long-form screenplays and one needs to keep that in mind. The themes about loss and the nihilism of war remain relevant. Banks doesn't dumb things down for his readers.
But structurally it doesn’t quite work. This galactic conflict–spanning mission is somehow subordinate to a series of stories that seem more like loosely connected role playing game sessions. At the end we’re not much more clear about what motivates Horza or the war itself.
Consider Phlebas remains imaginative, overreaching, flawed, and propulsive.
