Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks

The third Culture novel. I didn't care for this one nearly as much for a few reasons. First, the novel dealt mostly with non-Culture people, so it wasn't about the differences between how people normally think and how people in Culture think. Second, I didn't enjoy the split way the story was told, jumping between things that happened in the past (where generally bad things were happening) and things that happen now in a way that didn't explain anything until the end of the book. Then, when I got to the end of the book, I found that I actually didn't want to know anything about the scenes from the past. Third, I did not like the main character, a feeling that was strongly amplified by the ending of the book. I am glad that I read this book because I expect some of the later books to reference Use of Weapons, but this was not a particularly enjoyable read itself.

Pages: 512