Look to Windward

“... Yes, fuck off through the crowd, you cretin.”

Dedicated to the gulf war veterans, Look to Windward is all about war, PTSD, trauma and the wonders of symphonic music. The Culture for the unacquainted is a far in the future anarcho-utopian space faring civilization run by altruistic and smarmy sentient AI Minds. In their quest to do good, the Culture makes contact with space-faring but comparatively primitive civilizations and does its best to break down existing hierarchies and build up democracies. While it sounds a lot like American hegemony and imperialist meddling, the Culture promises it isn't, and they can statistically prove it.

Sometimes in their quest for galactic peace and love the Culture make mistakes, and this book concerns itself with one such example. In this case, the Culture works to break down the caste system of the Chelgrians. Things don't go according to plan when the new president of Chel, a member of the lowest caste and installed by the Culture, decides that what he really wants is pay back and kicks off bloody civil war.

I found this book to have incredibly strong prose and dialogue. This is head and shoulders above the rest of the series. I thought Inversions was peak Banks but I was wrong, this book is peak. Whether it's enchanting landscapes, witty wordplay, or clearly drawn characters there's really nothing but nice things to say about the book. Some of the dialogue made me laugh out loud, and there's ton of self-referential humor (at a certain point the characters converse by quoting the trademark silly ship names). There is an enjoyable balance between wit and poetic sentiment, some of these passages are hauntingly beautiful.

Unfortunately as enjoyable as this was to read, the plot and message were very frustrating to grapple with. This is a book with a lot to say, but it doesn't really ever get to the point. For all the pretty words and witty jokes there is a failure to explore the questions it poses. Most of the story is spent building up complex questions only for the resolution to be: Culture good, war bad, we're sorry.

Note: I also wanted to shout out Peter Kenny's incredible delivery in the audiobook recording, his take on the dialogue superseded my own inner narration whenever I settled in to read a few chapters.

PLOT:

The story follows two Chelgrians. Ziller is a famous Chelgrian composer so disgusted by his society and their caste system, that he renounces Chel and chooses to live amongst the Culture. Ziller is easily the best character in the book, and probably my favorite in the series; he's blunt, irascible, and hilariously vulgar. Quilan, a Chelgrian soldier whose body is rebuilt after the end of the war, wakes up to find his wife dead and the Culture to blame. Empty and grief-stricken Quilan is chosen for a mission; on the surface he will try to convince Ziller to return to Chel but hidden in his memories is a plot for revenge against the Culture.

Playing out on two levels the plot concerns itself with the conspiracy of Quil and the Chelgrians on one hand, and the larger questions of intervention and the nature of death on the other. At this point in the series I can safely say that the tension of the A plot is largely non-existent, the Minds of the Culture are clever and you can count on them to always find the solution in time. The B plot is what I found the most entertaining by far.

For a book that's about the experience of war there's a tremendous gap between the experience of the Chelgrians, gruesome and self destructive, and the Culture. Sure they're really sorry about the whole affair, but the war doesn't impact their society in the slightest. The contrast evokes Iraq war sentiment to me, given that this was written pre 9/11, I get the feeling that this is Bank's discourse concerning the gulf war. Hub, the mind of the orbital platform where the story takes place, is the only Culture character to have experienced war directly. Unfortunately the character of Hub cannot bridge the divide, and the interventionist issue is really never explored to any satisfaction. There were already a ton of characters but this book would have really benefited from the perspective of a Culture agent.

Death, its permanence, and its escape feature heavily in this book. Are you the same person after your revive from death? The Culture provides handy backups of its citizens personalities should they suffer meat death. The question of whether or not you are still you is presented only to never be answered. The premise of death and the value of life is a little thin, with the only question of substance being the value of life in a post-death society. If I had to describe the overall philosophy on display I think “a little thin” could apply to the whole thing.

TL;DR: Wonderful prose and a tight plot would usually make a great book, but when you ask big questions and offer small answers the reader is left frustrated. This is somewhere between 2 and 3 stars, I gave it 3 based on the quality of the prose alone.