Against a Dark Background by Iain M. Banks

Sharrow was once the leader of a personality-attuned combat team in one of the sporadic little commercial wars in the civilization based around the planet Golter. Now she is hunted by the Huhsz, a religious cult which believes that she is the last obstacle before the faith's apotheosis, and her only hope of escape is to find the last of the apocalyptically powerful Lazy Guns before the Huhsz find her.Her journey through the exotic Golterian system is a destructive and savage odyssey into her past, and that of her family and of the system itself.

Although it starts not really very well and the writing and conversation feels very wooden and clishe like after about half into the book the whole story picks up to a really nice finale.

Science fiction Banks, but not Culture? What is this madness! A dark heist novel, really, and quite a fast-paced one, too. Lots of stuff in it; perhaps a bit too much. The book feels a bit crammed. Some of these ideas might've been best used elsewhere. But despite the heaviness, the book was captivating enough to finish and quite interesting.

this guy is still the man

Banks' space opera take on the heist genre is everything I could have asked for. The descriptions. The world-building. The politics. The CHARACTERS. Incidentally, the protagonist is a woman and she's amazingly written. (The gender politics in this book especially are really good. There's even a scene where a shop owner tries to mansplain guns to her and it's SO GREAT. Honestly it's unbelievable how far ahead of his time Banks was.) Really, every character is solid and believable and complicated but also there are SO MANY WOMEN who feel like real people. And the relationships feel real, and the trauma. (There are a couple scenes that reminded me Banks is also a horror writer.)The ending fucked me up. I mean the entire last 10% of the book really but the way it ended.This book paired so well with the Machineries of Empire trilogy ([b:Ninefox Gambit 26118426 Ninefox Gambit (The Machineries of Empire #1) Yoon Ha Lee https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1446557461s/26118426.jpg 46065520]).I guess emotionally-intense post-modern space opera is extremely my jam these days.