Look to Windward - Iain M. Banks
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Look to Windward - Iain M. Banks

Fiction - Science Fiction - ISBN: 0743421914, 1841490598, 184149061X, 1857239695, 1857239814

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... You almost certianly wouldn't want to meet this man's psyche in a dark alleyway! "Look to Windard" is one of his sci fi pieces. It's not the first in his culture series, but if you haven't read anything else from that set, you could cope perfectly well with this, it would stand alone. (I have ... Read review





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Look to Windward
When using that middle initial M., Iain Banks writes grand space opera combining galactic ... more
scope with twisty, tricky probes into the darkest
secrets of human and other minds. Look to Windward
revisits the utopian but ruthless interstellar
Culture introd...
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Look to Windward - Iain M. Banks Look to Windward - Iain M. Banks
When using that middle initial M., Iain Banks writes grand space opera combining galactic ... more
scope with twisty, tricky probes into the darkest
secrets of human and other minds. Look to Windward
revisits the utopian but ruthless interstellar
Culture introduced in Consider Phlebas, exploring
the complex aftermath of a rare Culture
mistake--humanitarian tinkering with an unjust
civilization that accidentally led to massive
civil war and billions dead. After a harrowing
battle flashback, the scene shifts to one of the
Culture's wonderfully landscaped, ring-shaped
artificial worlds called Orbitals. A ghastly light
is awaited in the sky from distant suns detonated
in the war of Consider Phlebas eight centuries
earlier; an occasion for sombre festivity,
pyrotechnics, and a memorial symphony from exiled
alien composer Ziller. Meanwhile another tortured
member of Ziller's race--aggressors and victims in
that more recent civil war--arrives on a mission
whose dreadful nature emerges through fragments of
slowly returning memory. Elsewhere, in the
exuberantly imagined airsphere home of floating
"behemothaurs" almost too huge to imagine, the
clue to what's happening falls belatedly into
inexperienced hands...While scattering red
herrings and building tension for his final burst
of literal and moral fireworks, Banks shows us
around the Orbital in sensuous, lyrical
travelogues. Rich scenery, high living, low comedy
and dangerous sports contrast with reflections on
mortality and the lingering aftershock of both
those wars, recalled by ravaged veterans. Look to
Windward culminates with deft twists, inversions,
parallels, and savage justice, as unexpected as we
expect from this author. Recommended. --David
Langford
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Get yourself some Culture
Review of Look to Windward - Iain M. Banks by Bryn_Pearson

Advantages: brilliant plot, very readable
Disadvantages: can't put it down.

If you are one of these people who likes science fiction that is heavy on the plot and light on the techno-babble, Iain M Banks is undoubtedly the man for you. Lets start with some background then. Iain M Banks, is the cunning pseudonym of literary author Iain Banks (solves the problem of bookshops trying to list entirely different books in the same place.) In both his guises, he is a witty, dark and suprising author with a truly weird mind. You ...
...a dark alleyway! "Look to Windard" is one of his sci fi pieces. It's not the first in his culture series, but if you haven't read anything else from that set, you could cope perfectly well with this, it would stand alone. (I have read most of the others, but largely in the wrong order, and it doesn't hinder you too much.) The setting. If you are going to read any other Iain M Banks sci-fi first, read "Consider Phlebas" - the first of the culture ... Read review

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27.02.2002
A sense of wonder re-gained.
Review of Look to Windward - Iain M. Banks by Saturn

Advantages: Good for three or four re-readings
Disadvantages: None

...Who can say ? Look to Windward is a jewel. There are great sense-of-wonder set pieces here. A whole 'orbital' as a backdrop, beautifully thought our megafauna, cleverly and sensitively drawn villain-species. All these combine to produce a science fiction classic. This is deceptive of course, because behind it all are recognisable themes and the villains are not really villains at all, no more than any Culture character has ever been a true 'hero'. ...
...it was deliberate, either way, Look to Windward reads like the first death knells for the Culture. As a science fiction novel, I genuinely could not fault this book. The pacing was good, the set pieces excellent, it was never formula, it had a twist or two and a lingering ending. For me, this was the best science fiction novel that I have read for many years. For all of its thoroughgoing science fiction themes, it actually broke out into the mainstream ... Read review

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11.08.2001
(28.11.2001)
Viewed in reverse
Review of Look to Windward - Iain M. Banks by Ceebs

Advantages: good storytelling
Disadvantages: always wish they were thicker

After a whole (but dissconnected) series about the culture, we finally get to see them from the outside. As usual the story unfolds from several seemingly dissconnected parts, before finally assembling itself at the end. As with the last book those familliar with the Culture should read the first couple of chapters carefully as Banks is once again slipping the core of the plot past you with the skill of a matador or a magician.
For those who are ... Read review

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14.08.2000
Look to the future
Review of Look to Windward - Iain M. Banks by NeilHudson

Advantages: Excellent Culture novel
Disadvantages: Sometimes over-written

"Look to Windward" is a highly satisfying "Culture" novel from Iain Banks. There are believable characters, and a strong plot - a Chelgrian diplomat comes to the orbital Masaq', supposedly to convince a fellow Chelgrian to return to his homeworld, but in fact on a mission so secret that he has been artificially made to forget it. There are also some very impressive scenes in which the characters explore the orbital, giving Banks the opportunity to ...
...most though was the way Banks seems to be taking the Culture. So far, all these novels have been individual stories with a common background. It now seems to me that Banks has become interested in how the Culture will develop and evolve. Several times he refers to the Culture as decadent and even adolescent, and in this novel it is placed in the context of other, perhaps more mature empires. There is even a scene, many millennia afterwards, where ... Read review

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27.01.2001
Another masterpiece from the master
Review of Look to Windward - Iain M. Banks by Bluecat

Advantages: Great book, very enjoyable read
Disadvantages: Subplot detracts from the main action

...some excitement that I opened Look To Windward, his latest magnum-opus. I was not disappointed. The pyrotechnics of his earlier work have not disappeared, but they are more measured, developed and less hysterical than before. The vision of alien places and peoples is as bright and challenging as it ever was. But Look To Windward is a deeper, more rounded work than any of Bank's earlier efforts. The characters are drawn with a delicate empathy, and ...
...job of advising Banks on this. With a little more work, and a bit more detail in the main plot Look To Windward could have been a landmark in science fiction. As it is, it is a flawed masterpiece, but still a really good book, and Bank's best so far. ... Read review

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24.08.2000


Look to Windward - Iain M. Banks

Main specs

Type: Fiction

Genre: Science Fiction

Title: Look to Windward

Author: Iain M. Banks

ISBN: 0743421914; 1841490598; 184149061X; 1857239695; 1857239814

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Listed on Ciao since : 14/08/2000

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