Status Updates From Matter (Culture #8)

oh mannnnnn this is my 5th time reading this book, i know exactly whats coming but we are now in a room full of mysterious stupefyingly ancient artifacts, and hundreds of octpus aliens and i am rapt! this book is amazing!

yaaayyyyy! my favorite part! we are at the site of archaeological excavations in a mystery ruin thats hundreds of millions years old! a new mystery has begun which i remember fits neatly into the final act! this book is soo good even on pass number 5!

yesss! as usual right as we sashay from the 2nd act into the third, all 99999999 plot threads elegantly come together! what a master! its such a tragedy banks is years gone, i've only got 3 more of his books to read. poo!

golly! iain m banks was so talented at building unique believable alien cultures we are getting a really in depth view of the water based morthanveld and nariscene species who make their debuts in this book! i dont think theyre even mentioned before or after this one! that said, theyre fully fleshed out living, breathing beings and civilizations! what a treat for the brain and eyes!

and the wonderful slog contin ues apace like many of banks' books. the plot advances the characters develop thwart assassination attempts travel to the surface of their weird layered planet. i love the culture universe! once i'm done with it, its on to asher's polity novels for the first time! cant wait!!!

oh yay! now begins my favorite arc of the novel the incredible hyeng-zhar waterfalls and archaeology at the nameless city ruins embedded in the falls! this book is so amazing!

now we are in the second act which in many of banks' books is a joyous slog. as the plot sloooowly begins to unfurl its tendrils, and worldbuilding is locked in! banks rarely has one singular POV character, he usually has a few prominent ones and this book has 3 thus far. its sooooo good amnd likely to get another 5 star rating from me!

i looove this damn book! i will mourn iain banks for the rest of my life this fude had such talent for worldbuilding, prose vocabulary and so much more! this book proceeds exactly as i remember from my previous 5 rereads and i know exactly whats coming and still cant wait!

golly! what a magnificent writer and worldbuilder, banks was! in this m osr recent patch we had two xeno cultures the morthanveld and nariscene parley and the pages dripped with rich culture and humor. at least a dozen different uniqe xeno species were mentioned in passing, and its so damn sad we will never get more about them! RIP iain m banks!

this is my 5th time reading this book since it came out in 2010 or 2011. its just as good as all the other times! i looove the stupefying amount of aliens in banks' novels! RIP to a legend!