Use of Weapons

Overview

The man known as Cheradenine Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances' foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks and military action. The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him towards his present eminence, but despite all their dealings she did not know him as well as she thought. The drone known as Skaffen-Amtiskaw knew both of these people. It had once saved the woman's life by massacring her attackers in a particularly bloody manner. It believed the man to be a burnt-out case. But not even its machine could see the horrors in his past. Ferociously intelligent, both witty and horrific, USE OF WEAPONS is a masterpiece of science fiction.

Editorial Reviews

Editorial Reviews for this product are not available at this time.

Author Information

Bio of Iain M. Banks

Iain M. Banks has been acclaimed as the most imaginative British novelist of his generation. Born in Scotland in 1954, Banks pursued a variety of careers before turning to writing. The child of a naval officer and a former professional ice skater, he studied English at Stirling University while working as a construction worker and gardener, among other jobs. After taking a degree, he hitchhiked throughout Europe and Morocco before spending a year as a testing technician for British Steel. Over the late 1970's and early '80s, Banks visited the United States, worked for IBM in Scotland and moved to London to stay with friends while writing his first novel. Banks's first novel The Wasp Factory (1984), concerns a sixteen-year-old serial killer. Praised for its imagination, dialogue and black humor, it was selected in a British poll as one of the top 100 novels of the century. Banks followed it with Walking on Glass (1985), which examines three obsessed people who meet in a menagerie of conspiracy and torture. The Bridge (1986) is about a man, unconscious after an accident, who travels through a complex dream world and ultimately must choose whether to return to reality. Banks' other novels include Complicity (1995), which explores the themes of murder and revenge in the context of a thriller; and A Song of Stone (1997), about a pair of aristocrats in the aftermath of a European war. Among his science fiction novels are Against a Dark Background (1993), Feersum Endjinn (1994) and Excession (1996). 030

Customer Reviews

• Confusing and Hard Work

  Posted December 12, 2009 by Steve, Fort Meyers

  The story is not told clearly, mainly because the author relates it in NON-CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. I don't like to work so hard to understand my entertainment. Also, character switch is a cheap insult to the reader; we can't see what the other characters see. Mr. Banks needs a course in novel construction.

• Superb

  Posted August 27, 2009 by Opus104, Chicagoland

  The intricate timeline presents a challenge - but a pleasant one. Highly recommended to lovers of thoughtful speculative fiction with a literary bent.

• Intricate and Profound

  Posted July 30, 2009 by EricK, San Diego

  Use of Weapons is a novel I have reread many times with pleasure, and which I was ecstatic to find on sale at the Sony eBook Store.
  
  Iain M. Banks is one of the finest science-fiction practitioners today, and a distinguished mainstream novelist as well (under the same name, without the middle initial). Use of Weapons belongs to Banks' Culture universe, and while perhaps not as accessible as Consider Phlebas, Look to Windward, Excession or The Player of Games (any of which would be a better place to begin, the last being my personal time favorite), Use of Weapons should not present undue difficulties to any reader forewarned of the novel's structural conceit: namely chapters alternating with two time lines: one which takes its mercenary protagonist through one more reluctant assignment; the other which follows his career backwards in time, through representative episodes, back to the central mystery of his nihilistic yet profoundly moral soul. What might have been a gimmick in hands less adroit than Banks is redeemed by its aptness to the central character's own irreconcilable conflicts, his layered aloofness from the deeds of his past, and the corresponding need to revisit his fantastically awful defining moment, for which he can never atone.
  

• There are interesting ideas here but not a good read

  Posted March 29, 2009 by Wombatsami, Saskatoon

  I bought this as one of my first ebook purchases. There is enough matter here for only a short story--- not for a book the length this one became. It is written in a jumpy and episodic way with interesting branches of the story line just abandoned without obvious purpose. It was a disappointment.

Additional Info

Imprint

Orbit

Filesize

755.25 KB

Number of Pages

512

eBook ISBN

9780316068796