Some strange phenomenon is discovered in the univers. it shows signs of technology everybody could until now only dream about.No wonder all the major players want to claim it...

the story itself shows a lot of promise, just as the various characters do. but sadly Banks is not able to keep in my opinion his choise of opening sequences is a little unlucky. it just doesnt let you "dive" in to the story. but it gets a lot better after about 30 pages.
there are a lot of ships involved, all with funny names. but because the ships do not need to be in the same scene to communicate i just couldnt remember who is who. in the whole book Bank attempts to adapt a lot of different styles, but just doesnt quite manage to make them convincing. or different enough. a lot like a first novel, of a new author just discovering his tools... but it isnt... ( )

One of the more entertaining Banks outings, that is, if you don't mind the usual tendency to Mind suicide he has a thing for.

A young (for this setting) woman who aspires to Culture Contact and Special Circumstancesness is given an opportunity by a drone long involved with their family to get involved.

A strange alien Big Not So Dumb Object in a strange part of space is involved. Also an alien race called the Affront. (Yes, they liked their nickname).

Plenty of appropriately named ships for this strange in space action, too.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2009/10... ( )

ZB9

This is not one of my all-time favourites by Iain M. Banks but heck, it still beats a lot of what passes for intelligent Science Fiction out there hands down. The Culture is just such a tempting and galvanising intellectual space, and the joke is definitely on the Affront (and all who could be identified with them). ( )

Sci-fi intrigue in a distant future as various human and otherwise characters (including sentient space-ships, lots of them) try to unravel the mystery of an apparently trillion-year old star and it's enigmatic, synthetic satellite. The plot gets a bit hard to follow, with conspiracies and love-affairs and tons of sci-fi jargon and unpronounceable alien names, but the interstellar society Banks' creates is colorful and the drama is compelling enough to carry through the dense plot. Some of it reminded me of Vernor Vinge's two 'deepness' novels, which I thought were overall better on most levels, but the Banks was smart and had its own imaginative spin on what a nearly ideal future for humanity might look like.

Unless I missed something, the mystery of the star itself (as opposed to the artifact) goes completely unaddressed at the story's end. I also thought it was a bit cheap to pull the rug out from under the reader regarding one particular element of the plot (concerning the original discoverer of the excession), which is set up as a central element and then tossed aside near the very end. This is the first of Banks' "Culture" series I've read; I'm not in any rush to read another, but for a epic space-adventure, even with its flaws, this book holds up pretty well. ( )

It can be a slow book but it is the best expression of infinity I have ever come across in a novel. ( )

A return to the Culture for Banks after an absence of some years. This is also his first Culture novel to employ multiple viewpoint characters, and so it has to be said that the characterisation gets spread a bit thinly. But the sheer novelty and multi-coloured experience that is the Culture more than makes up for this.

Stars of the show are doubtless the alien race known as the Affront - who adopted the name because they liked the critical tag applied to them after some atrocity or other of theirs which they thought merely harsh but fair (I suspect that in the unrolling film of the book in Banks' mind's eye, the main Affront character was voiced by Brian Blessed!) - and the ship Minds who are as much characters as any of the biologic players. Indeed, some of the biological characters are far less interesting and some of them are not particularly nice, being far too self-centred; but you get the feeling that the opportunities the Culture offers does allow most biologicals the golden opportunity to be just that.

The Excession itself seems very much like a MacGuffin to allow the practice of politics both within the Culture factions and between the Culture and the Affront; but right at the end, Banks gives us a hint of what the MacGuffin was there for, and it opens up the universe of the Culture far more than previously.

There is more development and less goshwow action in this book than in previous Culture novels, but it's a worthwhile read nonetheless. ( )

A grand conspiracy amongst the Minds (super smart AI) combined with a mysterious device from some other dimension lead to conflict between the Culture and the Affront.

At times I felt like I needed to take notes to keep track of the ship names, who was on which side, and where things were. The characters of the ship AI Minds were much more interesting than most of the humans featured. Probably not the place to start if you have never read a Culture novel before. ( )

This is the first book I've read by Banks, and I look forward to checking out his other works - they came highly recommended from a friend. That said, much of this book (although certainly not all of it) feels very similar to Vernor Vinge's work - particularly "A Fire Upon the Deep" - both in plot and characters. As some other reviewers mentioned as well, despite the galactic-scale plot, the actual human characters seemed to have a lack of purpose and comparatively little to do with anything that happened (not to mention evoking absolutely no sympathy from the reader). ( )

Banks is an imaginative, talented storyteller, and this book featured some intriguing concepts, but on balance I was disappointed by Excession. For me there were two areas of the book that failed badly: characterization and universe-building.

I intensely disliked the main human characters Byr Genar-Hoefoen, an aimless diplomat whose essential purpose in life is to screw every woman with whom he comes into contact, and Dajeil Gelian, an utterly self-centered victim in need of serious therapy who will never be nominated for mother of the year. Add to this the Sleeper Service, the we’re-not-quite-sure-if-there’s-any-method-to-his madness Eccentric GSV who is Gelian’s enabler, Ulver Seich, a mindless young hedonist of ridiculous proportions (think “Riders of the Purple Wage,” without the humor), the poorly developed token not-so-bad-representative-of-an-inherently-cruel-alien-species Fivetide Humidyear, and a variety of other ship Minds who are all wallowing in their egocentric worlds and you don't really have anyone for whom to root. The only character I really liked was killed off after a couple of seconds (I kid you not, although a lot of things happened in those couple of seconds). And Gravious showed some promise, but didn't get enough copy to add much to the book.

On top of that, I thought this book told us a lot of new things about the Culture that made it a much less plausible universe; Banks creates opportunities to explore sexuality, longevity, and human AI interaction, and completely ignores the implications. Almost as an aside Banks throws in variable gender as a plot device (which somehow turns into an opportunity for a brief moment of gratuitous lesbian sex); yet he seems totally oblivious to the consequences of such a central component of identity (with the obvious comparison to Ursula Le Guin's treatment of the same subject in The Left Hand of Darkness). Similarly, this is a universe where people can live forever; yet this profoundly life altering reality seems to have no impact on how they live their daily lives. Many, many other authors have treated this subject in a thoughtful, thought-provoking way--for Banks, it is thrown in as device around which to steer a plot turn. And perhaps most bizarrely in this book (for me anyway, given the random order in which I am making my way through the Culture series) we learn a whole lot more about ship Minds, things that make it utterly incomprehensible to me that the humans of the Culture would blindly entrust their society to the Minds' wisdom and justice.

I don't agree with the reviewer who suggested the book should have been cut by 200 pages (which would be about 40% of its length!). It was slow paced, but I think this flowed from the plot. There were multiple layers of narrative going on here, and it inevitably took time to climb through each layer to get to the central issues and driving events of the story. ( )

An outstanding imaginary universe, complete with AI (artificial intelligences) that are believable and *at least* as interesting, and as distinctly personal, as human beings. The language is crisp and careful, the ideas are either fresh or freshly executed; there is little to mar this novel. A fine balance in plotting, a fine collection of subplots and schemes that fail or go awry. ( )

My favourite Banks novel to date. Aren't the Affront great? Great the way the situation matches our own politics. Great AIs. Stunning imagination and realisation. Great plot. Nobody does computer gibberish more exciting than Banks. There is not a page that is not a delight. The names of the space ships alone is better than most people's poetry. Rather than just list great things it is easier to say it is just a faultless space opera. ( )

A culture novel.

Stylish, intelligent, sophisticated space opera with human weaknesses thrown into the mix.

Perhaps the biggest, quickest and least bloody intergalactic battle I have come across.

Another good innings from a consistently good author. ( )

A culture novel. A post scarcity society - so always interesting there.
The idea in this novel is that an excession event is one where a society comes across something so advanced, so far outside it's experience that it is destroyed by it. An example given is that tribespeople experience an excession event when European visitors turn up on your island and come and introduce you to things like Christianity and taxation and smallpox.

The culture believes it has spotted a galleon homing into view and is understandably concerned.

It's great, read it. ( )

I love Banks's creation, the Culture. When I read this book, it was the first book of his that I had read. I found it difficult to follow, but at the same time I fell in love with the ships. It is the one book of his that I feel I would re-read ( )

Ordinary Girl's Excession Review ( )

(Reread.) Revisiting this was rewarding. Probably my second-favorite Culture novel. I think I picked up on a lot more of the intricacies this time around. The plot is convoluted enough that motivations are hard to understand on the first go-round. ( )

IMHO the best novel of mr. banks

Excession is typical Banks, very thorough and well written, an excellent example of hard science fiction. ( )

Ian Banks at his best ( )

Everyone wants to be an Affronter. ( )

Excession is a story of The Culture,and an encounter with an artifact/intelligence/culture completely beyond their comprehension. It is also a story of how The Culture itself, or at least parts of itself, goes to extremes in pursuit of their various goals.

In this particular book the human members of The Culture play a secondary role to the Ship Minds. That aspect of it, and the way the communication among the Minds is handled in the text reminded me a lot of Vinge's Fire Upon The Deep, which also shares a threatening boojum out there. Which is not to say that Banks has lifted any of his story. Just that there were enough similar elements, that part of my mind kept trying to bring remembered elements of Fire into alignment with Excession to predict what would happen next. It never worked. ( )

http://www.leftfield.org/~rawdon/book... ( )

My mind well and truly bent,ribs tickled,stomach churned and spine tingled.Like,pharmaceutical grade literature,man. ( )