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Loading... Look to Windward (2000)by Iain M. Banks
  
 jpalfrey | Dec 17, 2024 |    ) katmarhan | Nov 6, 2024 | Mahrai Ziller, a Chelgrian composer has left his home world for the safety and comfort of Culture. He is adored, almost worshiped by the Culture and has been tasked with writing a commemorative work to honor the memory of a horrific battle from the Culture/Idiran war. Quilan, a Chelgrian fighter, nearly lost his life in a one-sided battle. He survived but found he lost the love of his life in that same battle. Chelgrian High Command decide he’s the perfect candidate to convince composer Ziller to return to Chelgian’s home world – Chel. Early on, we learn (over and over again) that Ziller stubbornly refuses to meet with any of his Chelgrian comrades and especially not Quilan – who he fears might have been secretly sent to assassinate him. For my tastes, the plot really drags in the first half of the book, except for a fascinating side-quest following ancient, dirigible behemoths (that I imagined as some type of Kaiju) on a bizarre alien planet. There’s also a fun digression on ship names (a running Culture series gag) that displays Bank’s cleverness. So, I enjoyed the final third of the book, it was exciting and intriguing. I appreciated the exploration of the theme. War is messy, uncertain, and leaves behind a trail of both physical and psychological trauma. The Culture, with all its brilliance and morals, is not immune from this. I also enjoyed the Culture world building, getting more insight on things like Orbitals and Hub minds. However, the first two thirds of the book were slow, it’s a long build-up to an average plot. Ziller is a great character, but the rest are flat. And I despised the final ending. It seemed to make all the build-up and stakes nearly meaningless. Unfortunately, I can’t say more without major spoilers. Four stars for this tale of echoes of long past galactic war. A slow starting space opera with a worthy theme of the damage of war to society and to survivors. (  ) Kevin_A_Kuhn | May 29, 2024 |  ) WorkLastDay | Dec 17, 2023 | So like 1) In what way is it the culture's responsibility? 2) Why is the ending of the caste system presented as inevitably resulting in terrible violence worse than the caste system itself? I don't want to be too like "well this doesn't follow my communist morality so it's bad" but it does feel like a very strange moral tale to have the oppressed become atrociously violent suddenly for no good reason and for it to be the wrong thing to have helped them at all. But even if we accept this, it seems strange to blame the Culture given that this was apparently something a significant amount of the population immediately took to. Although the Culture influenced things somewhat, apparently if the caste-enders had come to power "naturally" the same thing would have happened. If the politicians or even a decent amount of the population had a serious investment in the caste system they could easily have stopped things getting that far in the first place (although again that'd be bizarre, morally). So if there were no Culture intervention at all, either 1) the same thing would have happened, possibly over a longer timescale, given there seemed to be widespread agreement on what was done up until the war and no major pushback 2) the caste supporters would have objected, taken up a stronger position, and probably catalysed a civil war anyway which would probably have been just as bloody except with the oppressed castes in a far weaker position. Of course, this is me being silly to a certain extent. Obviously it's fiction, you have a certain set up, and it's not pushing a super simplistic "oppressed people are bad for resisting" thing exactly. It's an attempt to set up a decent moral dilemma, and obviously if it's a moral dilemma there's no starting position that will totally satisfy me because it's always going to be unpleasant in some way! I mean like as a general opponent of most "intervention" in a real life context it's kind of weird of me to be defending the Culture in the book, even if it's not really like real interventions - we "know" the Culture is far more "good" than any state in real life, even with the bad stuff it does sometimes. The Chelgrian intervention also had very little benefit to them - in real life the bad consequences are often down to continuing oppression to benefit those who intervened. But it's near impossible to create a close to real scenario in the Culture universe I think. I definitely appreciate the effort and think he did a great job - that I'm writing all these words about it is a good indication I think what he's written is worth thinking seriously about, heh. It's a pretty great thing to do to try and write a book about intervention like this - even if I don't think the premise is perfect to talk about the problems and consequences of "humanitarian intervention" even with seemingly "perfect" societies is good. Although I did feel the civil war was intended to evoke memories of the Rwandan genocide, which seems kind of dodgy? The book is good in general. It's full of descriptions of the Orbital, which are amazing although I'm bad at picturing stuff from descriptions and if you're better at that than me you'll probably like it even more. The truly alien environment of the airsphere was great to read about too. The ending is good - I did think (ending spoiler) ) tombomp | Oct 31, 2023 |
 Banks writes with a sophistication that will surprise anyone unfamiliar with modern science fiction. He begins in medias res, introducing characters, places and events that are not explained in detail until many pages later. [...] The deus ex machina ending will strike some as too easy. But as in all good fiction, what's important in Banks's work is the subtext, which I take to be the idea that freedom is both necessary and dangerous, and that only by imagining the unimaginable, both in ourselves and others, can we hope to remain free. .. he is not afraid to to ponder the implications of his flash-bang spectaculars. He examines the fine distinction between hedonism (what the Culture thinks it practises) and decadence (what many others perceive), as well as the responsibilities that come with immeasurable power. An enjoyable romp is overlaid with tragedy as he rubs our noses in the consequences of war: ... AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
It was one of the less glorious incidents of the Idiran wars that led to the destruction of two suns and the billions of lives they supported. Now, 800 years later, the light from the first of those deaths has reached the Culture's Masaq' Orbital. A Chelgrian emissary is dispatched to the Culture. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction 1900- 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.95)
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LOOK TO WINDWARD discussion (The Culture group read)
Wikipedia in English (1)
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It’s set in the far future, in a galaxy inhabited by various intelligent races, although the humans seem among the more powerful and advanced of them. There’s no war going on, but there have been wars in the past, and the book deals with some unfinished business arising from a past war.
Banks is a good writer and I find his prose readable and quite congenial. His characters are varied and well drawn, and can produce some mildly humorous dialogue when appropriate. The book has a definite and quite engrossing plot, although it’s rather slow to get to the point.
When I try to think of anything I’ve read that might be similar to Look to windward, I come up with [b:Babel-17|1199688|Babel-17|Samuel R. Delany|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1257546421l/1199688._SY75_.jpg|13612561], which is something of a compliment because Babel-17 is one of my favourite books. Both books have the plot of a thriller, but a more ambitious style than the average thriller; an imaginative and decorative scenario; and an artistic element: poetry in Babel-17, music in Look to windward.
But beyond that they’re not the same. I find Look to windward, for all its good qualities, relatively lacking in subjective appeal. It’s basically a rather sad story (though written with touches of humour) and its most attractive characters have only minor roles in the story.
According to Wikipedia, Banks has said that his “approach has to do with my reacting to the cliché of SF’s ‘lone protagonist’. You know, this idea that a single individual can determine the direction of entire civilizations. It’s very, very hard for a lone person to do that.”
Well, that’s true. But an author who chooses to write about world-changing individuals could argue that such individuals are very rare, yes, but during the lifetime of the universe some of them can be expected to exist, so he’s entitled to pick such a one and write about him.
Judging by this book and the summaries I’ve seen of his other books, Banks reacts to the sf cliché he detests by writing about people who aim to be world-changing, but fail. I don’t know about you, but I find this rather sad and downbeat. I don’t insist on reading about successful world-changers, I’d be quite happy to read about people achieving lesser goals. But I don’t really enjoy reading about failures.
Nor does it improve matters much that this book is about the failure of an evil plan. We might rejoice at its failure, except that the book gives us no encouragement to rejoice at it. It’s just a failure.
I often reread books. Usually because I feel an urge to reread some particular scene; and then I’m drawn in and often reread the whole book. In the case of this book, I don’t feel inclined to reread it, because I can’t think of any particularly engaging scene that might draw me back to it. I admire the skills of the writer, but I wish he’d turn those skills to writing a book that I might enjoy more.
Squeamish readers should be warned that, near the end, two characters are killed in very unpleasant ways. I can tolerate this kind of thing if necessary, but I don’t see why I should have to. In the context of the story, the deaths are merely tidying up loose ends, and there seems no need for detailed descriptions of them. (