I finished the latest Iain M. Banks Culture novel, Surface Detail, last night. I'm afraid that it was a big disappointment and, for the first time with a Culture novel, I was looking forward to the end of the book.
The main problem is that the story is told from way, way too many perspectives. There is, essentially, a very thin story, or rather two intertwined stories, stretched to breaking point by telling it from several different perspectives in order to pad out the book to just over 600 pages. The main perspectives are:
- A virtual person, a disembodied consciousness, fighting a never ending war;
- Another virtual person suffering in a simulated Hell;
- A reborn person seeking revenge for her own murder;
- The person she's seeking revenge against;
- A Culture agent sent to stop her.
In addition there were other perspectives, but these were simply walk-on parts, not even essential to the story, but adding to the confusion and tedium. I felt like shouting "For Christ's sake, GET ON WITH IT!" at regular intervals.
Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men
I thought I'd have a bash at this next, as it's considered to be a classic. Written in 1930, it's the history of Mankind written five million years in the future by the last man.
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