Matter

Brilliant plot idea, but disappointing end

This book reads great through the first 400 pages or so.. An intriguing plot with interesting characters is carefully built up, leading the reader to expect a grand and satisfying finale, where every thread of the story will be resolved. Instead the book ends in way that makes one think the author lost interest in bringing the story to an end. Antagonists and protagonists alike are suddenly and quite absurdly extinguished by something neither they nor the reader saw coming. On the last few pages a lame end is compressed and not even the epilogue can really help to resolve it.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Not Iain M. Banks's best work

I'm a fan of the author's previous work, but this book disappointed me. Banks is an excellent writer, and any given page of Matter is enjoyable to read, but its plot is flawed. Two of the three major plot lines meander aimlessly, with no narrative conflict. The third is meatier, but while it is definitely put to rest, the way in which this is done feels more like a betrayal of the reader's trust than a resolution. Finally, the book's climactic moments are only tangenitally related to all that came before.

I'd like to believe that the book that was published was not the book that Mr. Banks planned to write, and that external pressures resulted in the wounded, seemingly truncated thing that is Matter. As it is, however, I can't recommend this book, even to fans of his work.

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

What a slog

I love this guy's stuff, but this one was a 500 page slog to get to the end where the last 100 pages are as exciting as any sci-fi techno thriller. I just wish that the whole book could have been as good, or at least about 300 pages shorter!

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

decent read, great last 100 pages

This was my second Iain M Banks "Culture" novel. The first one I read was "Use of Weapons". Several early chapters were a "hard read". I had to push myself. The last half of the book flowed much better, and the last 100 pages were excellent, with a good ending. "Use of Weapons" was more captivating, beginning to end, for me. That one I'd give 5 stars plus

Space Opera it is not....

It took me most of the book to really get into it. The world of Banks' Culture is immense; though he tends to use huge numbers to describe gargatuan objects and the like, his prose never really makes you feel overwhelmed (in the good way), like other well written space opera can. I needed to take a crash course on the Culture Wiki to be fully drawn into what was happening. Then, just as I started to care, I experienced one of the most unsatisfactory endings ever.
Bleh.

REALLY complicated book

This is the story of a world, that has at least 9 levels, that has several races inhabiting the worlds levels and a whole bunch more lurking above it. The races certainly look funny, our race can apparently not only change sex, but can look like a shrubbery if we want. Main characters end up being marginalized. Sidekicks can be really interesting, but we're not going to persue it. We're going to chase after an important contact, seeing unusual, really unusual worlds, and when FINALLY we get to the contact. He's talking to thin air and uninterested. Ok, next chapter. Iain Banks really loves a certain waterfall, he waxes poetic for pages and pages which is a central theme, or not...it's whats IN the waterfall. da da da dum. Bottom line for me - a continued to pick it up to finish it, not because I couldn't put it down in the first place.

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