Excession

I thoroughly enjoyed Iain Banks novel, Excession.  It's packed with fun, interesting ideas and theories.  The characters are all weirdoes, and the plot is unpredictable. On the flipside, Excession isn't for everyone. It is a meandering book more interested in world building than any action. So, a dilemma. I think the best solution is to describe the book, its strengths and weaknesses, and let you, the reader, decide it's overall merit.

Excession is part of a loose "series" called The Culture. It is not so much a series as a setpiece- the only thing Culture novels have in common with each other is the setting. I didn't have any problem with Excession as a standalone book. I should note though that I had skimmed the Wikipedia entry on the The Culture before hand, so I had at least some familiarity with the setting. Excession is very much a book about the galaxy bestriding civilization called The Culture. To such a degree that ones enjoyment of the book is directly linked to ones enjoyment of The Culture. So what is The Culture?

Essentially, The Culture is the Federation from Star Trek. Simple as that really. They have similar levels of technology- transporters, replicators, forcefields. Both the Federation and the Culture are post-scarcity multi-species utopias (so no money, no real property ownership, society bound together more by empathy than physically enforced laws).  As utopias, each civilizations' overall striving are now directed outwards; having solved all their internal problems, they seek to solve the problems of other civilizations.  Star Trek's Federation places a greater emphasis on exploration, the Culture places the emphasis of its expansion on fostering progress and enlightenment. Both civilizations pride themselves on having the moral high ground.

Blood brother to Excession?

So how can Excession be about an entire civilization? Two ways. First is that the titular Excession is one of those classic sci-fi 'mysterious alien artifacts of immense, but unknown power.' It's discovery sparks off a Culture wide crisis. So the main plot is about how the Culture reacts to an unprecedented danger/opportunity. Basically, shaking the civilization and seeing what drops out of it. The book is a series of interwoven short stories from a multitude of perspectives- each at least tangently related to the main plot.  The characters in the Excession are meant to represent the Culture as a whole- there is a broad variety of them each illustrating a different facet of the Culture. In this way Excession manages to portray the overall civilization.

I loved this stuff. The writing was smooth, the book moves along at a steady clip. And the world of Excession is just a lot of fun. It didn't bother me that Excession is also incredibly dense, loosely plotted, with many a one-note character. Who cares if a character is cartoonish, if that character is a conspicuously ghoulish vigilante who just so happens to be a sentient dream-stealing spaceship?  That is awesome.  Actually, there is plenty of humor in the book (I particularly liked the names of the Culture warships).  I heartily recommend Excession, unless all the stuff I described in my review seemed lame to you in which case I don't recommend it.  8 out of 11 stars or 4 out of 9, if you don't think it sounds good!