SPOILERS, OF COURSE
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So, I've just fished "Matter", and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed
it. Lots of Big Engineering (and I do mean BIG), interesting alien-race
shenanigans, interesting main characters who develop during the story,
and a last third that I couldn't put down even when I knew I should be
doing something else.
The Big Engineering this time is *really* big -- I mean, the Shellworlds
are enormously huge, but the Syaung-un Nestworld contains 40 *trillion*
inhabitants, more than the Culture's total population. It made me
wonder if Banks had worked out the mass involved, and whether there's
enough spare mass in a solar system to construct one. Mind you
"Consider Phlebas" notes that Involveds can make stars suffer
"significant induced mass-loss", so perhaps they dismantled one-half of
a binary system.
The other thing that struck me is the description of the upgrades Djan
has had: a fully tooled up SC agent is one *seriously* badass mofo.
Boosted reactions/muscles/bones, builtin "Electronics Are My *****"(tm)
effector suite, neural lace, laser fingernails. LASER FINGERNAILS! And,
just to top it all off, a life-sup****t anti-matter reactor IN HER HEAD!
Cool.
This is key in the climax, where she detonates it. If my calculations
are correct, with 25g of antimatter in that thing, she'd be carrying
around the equivalent of a megaton-level nuke inside her skull. As they
say, Don't **** With The Culture.
Oh, and I don't know whether it's a nod to LotR or not, but all the
protagonists, erm, go away[1] except the faithful servant, who comes
back to his family and eventual political power in his homeland...
[1] For values of "go away" seen in "Consider Phlebas", and "Against A
Dark Background" especially.
--
David Allsopp
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