I’d be happy to read more Banks on the basis of this one. I wondered whether the sci-fi setting was necessary for what Banks had to say, though. I can’t compare it to other sci-fi, but I noticed that the novel is in various ways as stylized as the ancient epic poetry I used to study. Less explicit about sex than violence, and the many planets described are reassuringly geoid (would trees evolve almost everywhere, for example?) Perhaps this was what ‘AnonymousFinder’ meant, and perhaps also the person who once described the Odyssey as the earliest work of science fiction.
(from BookCrossing)
ISBN: 185723135X