Use Of Weapons

I have a love hate relationship with the culture novels. The universe is so interesting but the books are really hit or really miss for me. Consider Plebias was alright, it throws you into the deep end pretty quick and it takes a whole book to wrap your head around the universe. Player of Games was really really good. Use of Weapons was pretty bad. It is not immediately obvious but the “odd” chapters are from a certain point of time to the end and the “even” chapters are in the past but going backwards each chapter. So in essence the last “even” chapter should have been the first chapter of the book and the first “odd” chapter should have been the middle of the book. Not only that but in some chapters there are flash backs in the flash backs. It makes it extremely hard to keep track of what is going on, who is who, why is what and where is who.
It was all over the place. I will keep going with the series but instead of hitting the fourth book right away I'm going to give it a couple of months to wash the taste of this one out of my mouth.