Use of Weapons (1990) (The Culture, #3) by Iain M. Banks

Banks' books don't always hit on all cylinders for me, but his sheer creativity and brainpower make this series so enticing. I get the sense, whenever reading him, that he's a dude who's way smarter than me. And his mind is capable of going into spaces so dark I couldn't possibly come up with them myself. Yet, even so, what's so appealing about this series is it's one of the first true utopias I've read that actually manages to still feature compelling conflict.

The ending of this book is phenomenal, and its main character turned out to be a poignant and sympathetic anti-hero for me even after the reveal contained in its conclusion. But its strange structure made it a chore to read when compared to other Culture novels.

Still a worthwhile read. I love being made to feel dumb by Banks.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Notable Highlights:

“He lay, often, looking at her sleeping face in the new light that fell in through the open walls of the strange house, and he stared at her skin and hair with his mouth open, transfixed by the quick stillness of her, struck dumb with the physical fact of her existence as though she was some careless star-thing that slept on quite unaware of its incandescent power; the casualness and ease with which she slept there amazed him; he couldn't believe that such beauty could survive without some superhumanly intense conscious effort.”

—

"In all human societies we have ever reviewed, in every age and every state, there has seldom if ever been a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this simple fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots.”

—

“The bomb lives only as it is falling.”