The Culture comes full circle (Look to Windward - Iain M. Banks)

Member Name: Deaner666

Product:	Look to Windward - Iain M. Banks
Date:	11/09/01 (126 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: intelligent, thought provoking, it's the Culture

Disadvantages: it ends, I want to live in the Culture, I have to wait until he writes another one

Like the pinnacles of Culture technology that are the giant Orbitals, Iain Banks' latest Culture novel has come full circle. What began with Consider Phlebas culminates with Look To Windward - both titles hailing from Banks' favourite poem 'The Waste Land', IV by T. S. Eliot.

Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

Like Inversions (amongst others of the Culture series), much of this novel revolves around the Culture's interference with a developing civilisation. However, here we see both sides of the story, unlike in Inversions in which the point-of-view is purely that of the Contacted civilisation; the importance of this is the bi-polar views Banks presents of the Communist Utopia that the Culture exists in. A topic that was last examined in such detail with the aforementioned Consider Phlebas and Horza's relationship with Balveda. I won't spoil the book by giving away the argument's of either opinion base, but suffice to say Banks debates the reader's understanding with typical imagination and gusto - his trademark plot twists all present and accounted for.

Even fundamental aspects of the plot hark back to Consider Phlebas - it begins with the death of a duo of stars, destroyed during the Idiran War that was at the centre of the first novel (presumably including the death of Vavatch Orbital in that book). The light from those artificial novas is soon to reach Masaq' Orbital and a commemoratory celebration is planned; however, a negatively Contacted planet (a rare mistake for the Culture) decides to take it's revenge...

Never in the sci-fi world has an author retained such consistent quality of theme and story.. always introducing innovation into a world that at first exists in pure fantasy and yet retains complete feasibility. The last few Culture books have really been mesmerising, it's been har
d to see how they can be equalled, let alone bested... but Banks keeps writing novels that retain the integrity of the series whilst introducing fascinating new concepts and ideas. Even when he's revisiting a theme that's been covered the reader is treated to a refreshing and meaningful experience. Thank you Iain.

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