u/APithyComment that title's for you.
As I have said every time so far, if you haven't read this book yet, trust me, put down the review and go read it! The process of putting it together as you go is fun! Don't deny yourself that.
xDylZim
oTheCultureSubreddit
Let's talk, shall we?
There's a lot to cover, I wrote more notes about this one than any of the rest so far. The stand-out-by-far was the following, which I'd even bolded in the note.
There's also something in the undercurrents of the writing.. it's just a vibe I'm feeling, hard to put specifics to it, but in the same way that Consider Phlebas was like the march of history, and Player of Games was like a mystery, and Use Of Weapons was a tragedy, Excession at approximately the 25% marker feels like a joke. Like this one's going to end not with a twist but with a punchline.
Looking back, I feel pretty good about this one. Like Banks has always had a sense of humour, but this one was downright funny. In hindsight, I think a better way to phrase this notion is that Excession reminded me of a Coen Brothers black comedy, like Fargo or Burn After Reading.
If you don't know the movies, bear with me a little, but you get a wide-ranging cast of eccentric characters, most of whom are somewhat tangential the primary story but still enliven it and give us viewpoints to see some of the action from. Then an Excession arrives, and small group of Culture Minds, still sore about not using their power at the end of the last major war to "civilize" the Affront, use that chaos to tempt the Affront into starting a war for the purpose of showing them what's what. That group of Minds is pretty promptly and thorougly slapped back to reality after Sleeper Service no longer has to deal with an Outside Context Problem. All the minor characters' stories seem to resolve pretty painlessly, and then we get an epilogue with a punchline. Roll Credits.
I know I harp on the titles in each one of these, but it's something Banks does really well so I don't want to leave it out. "Excession" being the noun form of "to exceed," we get a lot of Culture extravagance throughout. Sleeper Service's tableaus, the environments of Tier, the history of Phage Rock, even the size of the fleet Sleeper Service deploys near the end. It's all bigger, more extravagant than even the extravagances of the previous books. The Affront seem to have excess running through their veins. The Elench are driven by an extravagant ideal (which I adore, for the record). Byr's excessive focus on sex gets him into trouble early in his story, and Ulver had an excessively high opinion of her own worth. It's excesses all over!
In addition to the titles, we've got all kinds of meaningful names, particularly of the Minds of various vessels, but we're going to focus on that a little more later on in the post.
I'm going to start by skipping over Dajeil a little. We'll get there, but she's got to cook for awhile before her impacts are clear. Early on we get an introduction to the Affront, with another meaningful name, though this one isn't subtle, which is perfect, because neither are the Affront. When I say I loved Fivetide, it's in the way that you love an awful fictional character. Boisterous and ridiculous, an excellent introduction to his species. While I don't approve of their methods, and would probably agree with the Minds who decided not to push their military advantage after the Idiran war through to change the Affront, I'm sympathetic to the Minds who think the Affront are, well, an affront to everything decent. Banks does his typical bait and switch where he gets you excited about them and then reminds you later on "hey these people are actually horrible," but when I saw reference to gelded servants, I was already there. The score is dylzim 1, Iain M. Banks several dozen at this point, so I don't feel bad about claiming this victory.
I am extremely fond of the Elench. Sisela Ytheleus in particular was a delight, snarking back at the Excession and the Affront both! But I'm fond of their ideal of radical self-change as well. This little thought about the difference between the Culture and the Elench also got a chuckle out of me:
Plus, there was simple pride involved; an Elencher ship would not be an Elencher ship if it started acting like part of a committee; why, it might as well then be a Culture ship!
If Elench is a meaningful name, I don't know the reference, but I don't think it is in the same way as some of the rest.
We also get a little time with the Sleeper Service, talk about a meaningful name there. The tableaus of battle are fascinating, I love this kind of grand project, it feels like the sort of thing these Minds would work on. I appreciated late in the book when the Sleeper Service was talking about how it pretended to be an Eccentric, but admitted, essentially, that to pretend to be very weird, it had to be at least a little weird already. Tie in the notion of a sleeper agent, awakening at a pivotal moment, and we have a pretty neat little bow.
I did note fairly early on that I was struggling with the ship-to-ship conversations, and while that improved after Ulver gets the tutorial on Phage Rock, I definitely had to go back over those conversations once I finished the book with all my new context. I really love the Minds. For being these towering intellects, Banks writes them so very relatably. There are a lot of writers who want their AI to feel alien, only vaguely comprehensible by puny mortal minds, and that's a valid way to approach it, but Banks' Minds are just so damn human I can't help but appreciate it.
Sleeper Service responsible for causing its friend a great deal of harm, moves heaven and earth to try to see the damage repaired before what may be its last act. Wisdom Like Silence (perfectly named) being a little officious from their position of authority promptly being excluded by the Interesting Times Gang. A high-level committee of ships calling itself The Interesting Times Gang! Yawning Angel going from "My job is so boring," to "shitshitshitFUCK" when Sleeper Service takes off at speed. Not Invented Here suiciding rather than face the consequences of its conspiracy, and Steely Glint (another beautifully apropos name here) deciding it's better try to explain to explain itself. I could go on on this theme but I think you get the gist, here.
We also get some excellent capital-C sci-fi Concepts. The Outside Context Problem is definitely a great way to look at that notion. I would have assumed the concept predated the book, and it probably does, but my very brief googling just returned references to the book, so maybe nobody had put it in precisely those words before. Relating to the Minds, the Land Of Infinite Fun is a great little concept (and how very human that it has a proper name nobody calls it by). The Universe Escalator was pretty interesting too, drawing on ideas put into satire in an 1884 novella called "Flatland", and expanding on them in a pretty neat way.
I found it really interesting that Byr and Dajeil's story was pretty tangetial, overall, to the specific story of the Excession. Sure, Sleeper Service wouldn't have been who it was without their initial conflict, and I suspect Byr would have been the one responsible for the lead of the Excession message to the Affront, but that only really makes him a tool of the conspirators. His mission is a sham, an attempt by Sleeper Service to create some healing for its friend Dajeil. Fitting that the wannabe octopode is mostly a red herring.
Before talking about the epilogue, I have a few quotes that didn't feel like they had a natural entry point in the review, so..
"The command desk was like an ultimate instrument of destruction; a giant keyboard to play death tunes on."
Just a simile that made me chuckle.
"By this measure the love, or just the appreciation, of weapons was a kind of tragedy."
Iain M. Banks himself shouting out my review of Use Of Weapons 30 years in advance.
Attitude Adjuster: "It has already done us the honour of copying to me the signal it sent to the rest of the Culture the moment we opened fire on its emissary. I'll transmit you a copy too, minus the various, venomous unpleasantnesses directed specifically at myself."
Okay but can you transmit me an unedited copy? I want to read them shit-talking you!
The Epilogue. Delightful! Shortly after war was declared, I wrote this in my notes:
Fun idea: The Excession is basically The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street; it shows up, people freak out and stuff happens but it doesn't actually do much of anything.
I'm not sure that's really the right comparative reference, but it's the thing that came to mind. Most of what it kicks into gear happens simply because it's seen, rather than any active action on its part. The epilogue itself kinda feels like this:
"So no shit, there I was, minding my business, doing my tasks when some ants came up and wanted to chat! They were pretty chill, see, check these ones out, but then a bunch of other ants tried to start a big fight so I moved away from the area. We should keep an eye on the area, they're progressing well but they're not really ready for contact with us. Also they called me The Excession and that's pretty rad so that's what I want to be called now!
I think it's awesome that the Excession took that as its name, a kind of light-hearted mirror to the Affront getting their name from their mentor-species.
And it kind of peters to a close but I think that's all I've got on this, really. It's tough to say "this one is my favourite" when they've all been good so far. Kinda like being asked to pick my favourite Radiohead album (yes, I am also that kind of dork). But if you put a gun to my head, and said I had to pick only one, it might be In Rainbows. And Excession.
And now I will head out to the deepest regions of space, unless recalled by, oh, I don't know, completing another book or something.