This is the second book in the Culture series, if you go chronologically by published date. It is also the most boring one of the 4 I've read so far in the Culture series. I see people online gushing over how interesting the story telling is when one thread starts from the beginning and the other from the end, but this seems to me to be just a silly gimmick, that does not help to lift off the average and boring story off the ground. Here is the ending: Zakalwe is actually his brother who killed the original Zakalwe and his sister Darkscense (a stupid name as stupid names come, though Banks is a champion in making up the most dumb names for aliens - I can feel Heinlein raging against moronic names in SciFi).
Yes, he is the Chair Maker because he made a chair from the bones of his sister, including her broken pelvis! We had to wade through 400 pages of shitty prose to get to that "exciting twist"! The twists in this book are definitely sub par.
Other than that, Sma is again here - she seems to be the most reccuring character. This time she also organizaes her habitual group sex orgies and other fun stuff that Banks seems to think people living in space would enjoy en masse (why? people are not enjoying group sex en masse on this planet - why would that change in space?).
I keep saying that I will stop reading the Culture novels, but I still reach out for them because all of us humans want something familiar. Maybe after this disappointment I will truly stop.
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