***100 Days of Summer 2023***
Reading prompt: Book that has been on your ‘to read' list for over 5 years
Virtual 12 sided dice roll: 7
For the first time I floundered while reading a Culture novel. Not because the book wasn't Banks' usual fare, but because I have ended up with 4 library books due within days of each other. This one is an e-book with someone waiting for it, so it became priority one. I didn't want it to just disappear before I finished reading. Not the best conditions for reading pleasure.
Iain Banks had a remarkable imagination. He produces a plethora of alien beings, each stranger than anything that I could come up with. He also creates realistic problems with interspecies communication. The Culture theoretically has a philosophy similar to Star Trek's Prime Directive—to allow less developed cultures to progress at their own pace without interference. In practice, however, they have their spy agencies, Contact and Special Circumstances.
In this novel, we follow multiple members of a royal family from a small portion of a multi-level Shell World. The girl child, of course, is devalued and leaves, eventually becoming a Special Circumstances agent. That is until her father is killed, one of her brothers flees from assassination, and SC becomes interested in what is taking place on this Shell World, where an incredibly ancient city is being revealed by a tremendous waterfall. The youngest son of the royal family ends up in charge of the recovery of artifacts from this dangerous excavation.
A small royal family of a primitive kingdom becomes the focus of interstellar intrigue. I believe I would have enjoyed it more if I had been able to read in a more leisurely fashion.
Book number 500 of my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project
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