Book review: Matter

By Iain M. Banks. Another in the wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am Culture series, of which the first and arguably best is Consider Phlebas. My picture shows the cover of the edition I read recently; the old cover is better.

A thing I didn't notice on first reading: the finale - coming back to the shellword, and what happens then - is really quite a small fraction of the book, perhaps a tenth overall.

The story, broadly, is internal politics in a steam-age nation leading to Our "Hero" fleeing with his servant to the surface and then beyond, allowing us to see the world's structure and something of the interspecies politics; followed by return and exciting fighting finale. The "beyond" becomes a little bit stretched in my humble opinion; they go here, and there, but we all know it is just for show.

The gradually increasing importance of the Falls, and what may be found in the excavations, is well handled. We're never told explicitly that the Oct engineered the entire war in order to get someone easily manipulated into control of the area, but it becomes clear on its own. By contrast clever Oramen is implausibly blind to his own danger.

The epilogue is kinda necessary, something had to happen, so I forgive him it. It has a vague similarity to Sam's return in Lord of the Rings; though this being Banks rather than Tolkein there is no emotion or fulfillment, only humour.

Quibble: the shellworld levels are vast: it is 40k km across, after all, or whatever. And yet the primitive steam-age civilisation of the Sarl is able to control the entire 8th level, if we believe the book. This seems very careless; they should just control a small fragment a few k km wide around their pillar, and then perhaps something of the 9th.