Iain Banks / Iain M. Banks fans discussion

Discuss Look to Windward here.

I could have sworn that I had not read this book before... although it is hard to tell, because I am borrowing it from the library...

And then I read the prologue, where two soldiers on the battlefield are close to death, and one of them has to abandon the other one. Then the narrative jumps suddenly to a cocktail party on a barge, very anticlimactic.

I found myself wondering if I haven't read this before, but I'm almost halfway through now and I haven't had the same feeling of deja vu. Is there another Iain Banks book that begins almost the same way?

Travis wrote: "Is there another Iain Banks book that begins almost the same way? "

Perhaps a bit. The Player of Games introduces Gurgeh in what turns out to be just a war game, not actual war, and soon switches to a party. Use of Weapons starts with a prologue where we see a tiny fragment of one of Zakalwe's war exploits, before turning to sedate scene of recalling Sma to "active duty" (also during a party). Prologue to Consider Phlebas describes briefly desperate flight of unfinished "newborn" Mind before destruction of its factory ship "parent"; the book continues with a very vivid scene where imprisoned Horza is rescued by Idirans. Interestingly enough, the imprisonment scene happens during an elaborate dinner nominally in the prisoner's honor.

But I can't see how could one confuse these novels, despite them all featuring some kind of counterpoised war and party.

On a very tangentially related note, somewhere, either on Culture mailing list or on long dormant newsgroup there were excellent, long, meticulous and somewhat unorthodox blow-by-blow analyses of Use of Weapons and Look to Windward. I don't even remember the author any more. It would be nice if someone have them, and could make them available.