Use of Weapons

Jorgen@bookrastinating.com reviewed Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks

not sure it fully lands for me

4 stars

Content warning incl discussion of ending

Like, I know the ending is fairly meticulously set up but like why? He could just be the other zakalwe and the story would still work, maybe be better? Like, if it just was cheradenine and he was a bit more ruthless, it would land better; he'd have learned his horrific lessons about the Use of Weapons and applied them as opposed to always known them and been remorseful about it the whole book long? I get it's a well done twist but i feel like it's there for its own sake, and mainly undermines the meaning?

Hyperlink Your BOOKS reviewed Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks

Carbon Fascists

4 stars

Content warning Spoilers for the plot of Use of Weapons, including the ending

This is the second Culture novel I've read, the other being "Consider Phlebas".

I was a bit disappointed by the previous book's outside view of the Culture itself, which I had seen described in advance and was curious about. This novel similarly has primarily an outsider's perspective, but it still manages to give a better glimpse into what life in the Culture is like, with several interludes of luxurious post-scarcity hedonism, and an apparent near transcendence of aging and death.

The plot concerns the moral grey areas and hypocrisies of the Culture's interactions with other societies. They abhor violence themselves when confronted with it, but are not above employing a man like Zakalwe to wage war on their behalf, or abandon their allies on a whim in the wars they choose to fight. Yet they do so in order to prevent larger scale wars, and retard the growth of fascist movements that don't consider everybody in the Culture, and many outside it, to even be people.

I found the structure of the novel a bit confusing, especially initially. Alternating chapters follow two strands of Zakalwe's life, with one moving forward and one backward in time. They come to a head in a pair of chapters, and an epilogue, that reveal exactly the type of monster that the Culture has partnered with. The payoff is worth the confusion.

Keith Stevenson reviewed Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks

Review of 'Use of Weapons' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Use of Weapons marks a departure for Banks from the more linear storylines of Consider Phlebas and Player of Games to what is effectively a character study of Cheradenine Zakalwe: a non-Culture human who has been recruited by Special Circumstances to... do what SC do.

There were a lot of elements I liked about the book, providing as it does a better look at the imperatives and motives of Special Circumstances and - by extension - the broader Culture, and there were some funny and often gut-wrenching set pieces along the way, but the overall effect (including the disorienting time jumps to different epochs in Zakalwe's long and dangerous life and the barely explained 'shock' ending) was not as satisfying as a more conventional approach to storytelling could have been. As a result, the book felt more like it was trying to make a point at the expense of entertaining …

Use of Weapons marks a departure for Banks from the more linear storylines of Consider Phlebas and Player of Games to what is effectively a character study of Cheradenine Zakalwe: a non-Culture human who has been recruited by Special Circumstances to... do what SC do.

There were a lot of elements I liked about the book, providing as it does a better look at the imperatives and motives of Special Circumstances and - by extension - the broader Culture, and there were some funny and often gut-wrenching set pieces along the way, but the overall effect (including the disorienting time jumps to different epochs in Zakalwe's long and dangerous life and the barely explained 'shock' ending) was not as satisfying as a more conventional approach to storytelling could have been. As a result, the book felt more like it was trying to make a point at the expense of entertaining the reader.