Book 2: "Matter" by Iain M. Banks
Thursday, January 21st, 2010 12:26![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwakeFerbin looked around again. "How extraordinary," he breathed, then coughed.
"Extraordinarily boring, sir," Holse said, frowning at his piece of dried meat. "We've been sailing over this water for the past five long-days or so and while the prospect is most impressive at first and the air bracing, you'd be amazed how quickly the impressiveness and the bracingness become tedious when that's all there is to contemplate all day. Well, all there is to contemplate all day save for your good self, of course, sir, and frankly you were no circus of boundless fun in your sleeping state.
This was the longest of the Culture books so far, and it really didn't need to be. Djan Seriy Anaplian's journey and that of Ferbin and Holse seemed to drag on forever, just as the flight across the Cumuloforms' level of Sursamen did for Holse. I thought that the three of them were never going to meet up and return to succour Oramen. When things finally came to a head, the story was over and done with way too quickly, and just came to a dead halt. and you could easily have missed the final chapter, lurking after the glossary.
The process of more primitive cultures being mentored by ever more highly developed Involved species, is interesting, however. The Sarl and Deldeyn are not yet Involved species, being confined to one planet, while the Oct and the Aultridia are at the lower level of Involved species. Above them come the Nariscene and above them, at roughly the same level as the Culture, come the Morthanveld. The Shellwords are fascinating structures too, with their fourteen levels populated by different species, lit by rollstars and fixstars which divide time into long-days and short-days as well as long-years and short-years, not that I could visualise how it all worked, unfortunately. Although the Oct saw themselves as being descended from the long-dead makers of the Shellwords, I suspected that things would go wrong when they started to take an interest in the goings-on at the Falls, and go wrong they did!
The Oct were also not slow in pointing out that they were, by their own claim at least, directly descended from the Involucra - the very people who had designed and constructed the deeply wonderful Shellworlds - and so part of a line of almost God-like creatures nearly a billion years old. By comparison, the Aultridia were ghastly parasitic newbie slime barely worthy of the term civilised.
"Extraordinarily boring, sir," Holse said, frowning at his piece of dried meat. "We've been sailing over this water for the past five long-days or so and while the prospect is most impressive at first and the air bracing, you'd be amazed how quickly the impressiveness and the bracingness become tedious when that's all there is to contemplate all day. Well, all there is to contemplate all day save for your good self, of course, sir, and frankly you were no circus of boundless fun in your sleeping state.
This was the longest of the Culture books so far, and it really didn't need to be. Djan Seriy Anaplian's journey and that of Ferbin and Holse seemed to drag on forever, just as the flight across the Cumuloforms' level of Sursamen did for Holse. I thought that the three of them were never going to meet up and return to succour Oramen. When things finally came to a head, the story was over and done with way too quickly, and just came to a dead halt. and you could easily have missed the final chapter, lurking after the glossary.
The process of more primitive cultures being mentored by ever more highly developed Involved species, is interesting, however. The Sarl and Deldeyn are not yet Involved species, being confined to one planet, while the Oct and the Aultridia are at the lower level of Involved species. Above them come the Nariscene and above them, at roughly the same level as the Culture, come the Morthanveld. The Shellwords are fascinating structures too, with their fourteen levels populated by different species, lit by rollstars and fixstars which divide time into long-days and short-days as well as long-years and short-years, not that I could visualise how it all worked, unfortunately. Although the Oct saw themselves as being descended from the long-dead makers of the Shellwords, I suspected that things would go wrong when they started to take an interest in the goings-on at the Falls, and go wrong they did!
The Oct were also not slow in pointing out that they were, by their own claim at least, directly descended from the Involucra - the very people who had designed and constructed the deeply wonderful Shellworlds - and so part of a line of almost God-like creatures nearly a billion years old. By comparison, the Aultridia were ghastly parasitic newbie slime barely worthy of the term civilised.
