Product Description

It was one of the less glorious incidents of a long-ago war. It led to the destruction of two suns and the billions of lives they supported. Now, eight hundred years later, the light from the first of those ancient mistakes has reached the Culture Orbital, Masaq'. The light from the second may not. 'Confirms Banks as the standard by which the rest of SF is judged' GUARDIAN 'In terms of sheer storytelling prowess and verve, Look to Windward is a work of genius' SFX 'A great book' NEW SCIENTIST

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5258 in Books
• Published on: 2001-08-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 403 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
When using that middle initial M., Iain Banks writes grand space opera combining galactic scope with twisty, tricky probes into the darkest secrets of human and other minds. Look to Windward revisits the utopian but ruthless interstellar Culture introduced in Consider Phlebas, exploring the complex aftermath of a rare Culture mistake--humanitarian tinkering with an unjust civilization that accidentally led to massive civil war and billions dead.

After a harrowing battle flashback, the scene shifts to one of the Culture's wonderfully landscaped, ring-shaped artificial worlds called Orbitals. A ghastly light is awaited in the sky from distant suns detonated in the war of Consider Phlebas eight centuries earlier; an occasion for sombre festivity, pyrotechnics, and a memorial symphony from exiled alien composer Ziller. Meanwhile another tortured member of Ziller's race--aggressors and victims in that more recent civil war--arrives on a mission whose dreadful nature emerges through fragments of slowly returning memory. Elsewhere, in the exuberantly imagined airsphere home of floating "behemothaurs" almost too huge to imagine, the clue to what's happening falls belatedly into inexperienced hands...

While scattering red herrings and building tension for his final burst of literal and moral fireworks, Banks shows us around the Orbital in sensuous, lyrical travelogues. Rich scenery, high living, low comedy and dangerous sports contrast with reflections on mortality and the lingering aftershock of both those wars, recalled by ravaged veterans. Look to Windward culminates with deft twists, inversions, parallels, and savage justice, as unexpected as we expect from this author. Recommended. --David Langford

Review
'It's a gymnasium for the imagination' EVENING STANDARD, 'A mordant wit, a certain savagery and a wild imagination' MAIL ON SUNDAY, 'Spectacular ... the field needs his energy, skill and invention' THE SCOTSMAN, 'Banks' mind-expanding future history is unrivalled for imaginative sweep, startling ideas, and savage but wry sense of humour. One of the very best just got even better' STARBURST

NEW SCIENTIST
'A great book'

Customer Reviews

Best stuff has an "M"
I REALLY don't understand all those previous reviews which give this one or two stars. I think Look to Windward is a beautiful, subtle meditation on life, death, revenge, heaven, eternity, oblivion. The final dialogue between the Hub Mind and Quilan is just wonderful - I had tears in my eyes. The people who compare this to the previous Culture novels, don't really seem to get it (IMHO). Banks has written several Culture novels, but can anyone really say that any two are similar in style and content to each other. I don't think so. And that is part of Banks' genius - he can create a whole universal canvas which is entirely consistent from one novel to the next, but still have the ability to place individual stories within their own framework and context. Look to Windward contains some of the best imagery Banks has produced - I particularly like the idea of the light from the dying star arriving at the orbital millenia (in real time) after the war which caused it has ended, and being witnessed for a second time by those that took part in that war. I also wouldn't mind a go at lava-rafting (backed-up or not!). I read all of Iain Banks' books as soon as they come out, but I've got to admit that I think he writes his best stuff these days with an "M" in his name. Wasn't too taken with the Business (although that did seem to me to be an attempt to place the Culture in the context of the real world - how the Culture might have begun??), and Song of Stone was an interesting exercise in form, but not much else. Look to Windward (and Inversions before it) is fine writing though. I hope it isn't the case (as has been rumoured) that he wont be writing any books (of any kind) for a while.

A superb addition to the Culture saga
Following the baffling (or intriguing, depending on your point of view) mediaeval shenanigans of Inversions, Iain M Banks has genuinely delivered the goods with this one, giving the Culture aficionados what they *really* wanted.

"Look to Windward" is a staggeringly imaginative chunk of hard sci-fi, with some of the strongest characterization and mind-bogglingly grandiose scope since Banks' classic "Consider Phlebus".

Who could not empathize with the battle-weary, bereaved Quilan whose tortured soul seeks oblivion, and yet who could not condemn him for the ghastly mission he agrees to undertake?

Has absolute power begun to corrupt the Culture? Can they honestly still claim the moral high ground after their ill-judged and catastrophic intervention in the war?

This novel touches on some pretty profound ethical dilemmas along the way. There is also much wise and possibly prophetic investigation into the nature of the soul, heaven and omnipotence.

Please don't get the impression that this is all heavy stuff though; there is much amusing and witty dialogue between the chief protagonists. Some of Ziller's bon mots will have you in stitches!

To the delight of the Culture anoraks, there is also a huge amount of information about Culture minds/hubs, personality backups, orbitals and (delightfully!) a roll call of some of the more eccentric Culture ship names.

How I would love to visit Masaq' Orbital; I guarantee you will too!

A fantastic book, in a different way than you might expect.
Some people just don't get it. Looking through the reviews below, I see (negative) comparisons to Player of Games, Consider Phlebas and Use of Weapons. Well, for those of you who haven't noticed, I. Banks has been evolving, his writing changing - both Inversions, and Look to Windward are both stylistically very different to the rest of his SF novels. They are books of emotional exploration, literate analyses of the human condition. And this is a good thing.

You see, many authors just recycle their earlier books, change the plots, throw in different characters, and never really change. Iain Banks, however, continues to astound with his superb range of ideas and abilities. Look to Windward is a beautiful, thought-provoking and intensely moving book that explores the changes that occur in people (and machines) during periods of immense emotional turmoil. The book is most closely linked to Inversions (in writing style) and Use of Weapons (as a character study), but make no mistake, this is no Consider Phlebas-style space opera (there is very little action).

So thank you, Iain, for continuing to challenge and provoke your readers (and it seems a lot of them aren't up to the challenge). This is an incredibly emotionally dense book, laced with some typically banksian humour, and I just couldn't stop reading it once I had picked it up. The plot is never so linear as that of Player of Games, and the reader has to do a lot more work to tie the ends together and make sense of the integrated whole, but this forces the readers to look inside themselves, like any good work of fiction will do. A stunning achievement, and a testimonial to the movement of s.f. incorporating literary devices. Just don't expect another space opera.