The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain Banks

[phil_geo]

I just finished this book, the last Culture book written by Banks before his death. I found the book to be good, but overly long - it is about 500 pages and could easily have been 300. Also, the lack of emotion in almost all his characters really makes it hard to be excited reading his books. You are interested, but never excited. There was on part towards the end where a Ship AI cursed and I actually gave a little fist pump because I was so starved for any real investment by the characters.

Minor spoiler:
My other big problem is the central mystery of the book. The characters realize early on that no matter what the answer to the mystery, it will likely change nothing in the grand scheme of things. Since this mystery is the plot of the entire book, you kind of expect that it will turn out to be of huge importance, shocking all the characters. But double twist! - it turns out exactly like they thought; the mystery is not important and they probably could have not investigated it at all. How exciting.


In one way, that may be the point of the book - that many goals and mysteries we place before ourselves are ultimately pointless endaevours simply contrived to keep busy. But that doesn't mean you should write an entire book about them.

Overall I'm glad I read it, but I'm looking forward to something exciting for my next read.

 

[Alasdair Shaw]

Certainly not his best book.
However I do rather like an anticlimax. I also like Having excitement played down from time to time. In fact, when I think of my favourite books in most genres you could say nothing really happens!

 

[phil_geo]

In general, I agree. I just finished Bellwether and greatly enjoyed every minute, even though afterwards I realized basically nothing happened. They seemed to go out to eat quite a bit. This time it didn't do it for me though, although I certainly don't regret reading it.

 

[mylinar]

I bought this book at the same time as getting Leviathan Wakes and decided to read that first since the author is new to me. I didn't know this was Bank's last Culture book though. It makes me want to save it for some other day since there are other books of his I have not .

 

[heretics fork]

i have a few books to go before I am done with the Culture series. I am a huge fan of the culture books, and I am sad at the idea that this is the last one ever.