Use of Weapons, by Iain M. Banks

I'm stunned by Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks. Looking around, this is not an uncommon reaction for readers, to a shock of an ending. I'll say straight off, if there's any chance you'll read the book - if you read SF, if you've heard of it - minimise any time you spend reading reviews. Too bad, that I've already mentioned a shock ending, but...

I gather Banks's first try with this story, written I think before his first success with more mainstream fiction, employed a very complicated narrative structure. This later take only appeared as the 3rd in his 'Culture' series. It still does make demands on the reader, with two interleaved strands, one going forwards recounting the story of mercenary Cheradenine Zakalwe's latest mission for the Culture, the other going backwards to the darkest events of his past. And before even starting you'll notice in the contents the oddity of a book which tails off with an epilogue, some verse, and then a prologue(?).

It's more complicated than I said, to be honest, because there are a multitude of diversions, in the shape of flashbacks, flash forwards, and switches to different points of view. And Banks is clearly withholding information all the time. There's good reason for this. It sinks in that the main point of it all is not the outcome of Zakalwe's mission or anything like that, but his profoundly damaged psychology. The writing often has the quality of interior landscapes, rather than banal reality. I found it possible to accept the narrative as is, understanding this. As an aside, the descriptive writing, of both land- and cityscapes is often lyrical, evoking feelings of beauty and yet the melancholy of past experiences. It's so well written...

The writing has laser like precision at times; individual words have to be exactly so. I'm going to riskily (from the spoiler perspective) quote a few sentences. The context here is that two principal characters have found themselves leading opposing armies, in a terrible struggle which has taken a toll on the minds of both. One of them, besieged in a landlocked battleship, finds the means to trigger an extreme reaction in the other. This other has to hand just a small handgun:

He pressed the gun hard against his temple and pulled the trigger.

The besieged forces around the Stabarinde broke out within the hour, while the surgeons were still fighting for his life.

It was a good battle, and they nearly won.

So: read that last bit carefully. Who nearly won? Did he survive? 

A perfectly crafted ambiguity; I'd love to know if the same thing is achieved in translation. As I read Use of Weapons it dawned on me that Banks had left evidence and signs all over the shop, as to what was going on, and about the truths which lay behind the fragile picture of things which Zakalwe seemed to have. This book needs to be read again, in the light of what we finally understand at the end.

Let's talk about The Culture. Most of Iain M. Banks' science fiction is set within the universe of the Culture, but there are only occasional links between the books. I've now read just under half of them. The basic idea is that The Culture are the galaxy's ultimate 'goodies': they have superior technology to everyone, and when they see fit, they guide and intervene as appropriate, ideally without even being noticed. However, things are often not ideal. Sometimes, in contradiction to all their utopian principles, they get their hands dirty, employing the secretive organisation known as Special Circumstances and its agents, such as Diziet Sma, who features heavily in Use of Weapons, and who for all her special abilities and omniscience, fails to realise the truth until the end of the story. When things get really dirty, Sma and the rest employ unusually able mercenaries like Zakalwe. Zakalwe seems to like his work, but won't become an actual citizen of the Culture. As you may guess, the culture of The Culture is more or less anarchist, which never works for long in any kind of human situation; unless there's another factor. This factor is artificial intelligence. All the various AI 'Minds' run everything, and look after the humans. I know I'll have to read more books before I can really comment further, but on the face of it, life is near ideal for the humans of The Culture. The Culture faces many challenges in and around the galaxy, especially from civilisations who see The Culture as an existential threat to themselves. They're usually some kind of empire, of course.

We do see quite a lot of Diziet Sma - and also her drone sidekick who supplies a lot of the dry humour in the story (one of the most appealing aspects of the Culture books is the humour, which often comes from the AI). Sma isn't perfect, but she's a classic powerful female hero (I'm dodging around use of that dire expression "kick-ass"). She's exemplary in following the Culture principle of intervening and tinkering from as much distance as possible. But agents like her will always have a problem with someone like Zakalwe, who doesn't welcome SC's desire to track them everywhere - even though he wants and frequently needs them to come and rescue him when necessary. And it's more of a problem when she doesn't know as much about him as she thinks. Diziet Sma appears elsewhere in the Culture books, but I think this is the most prominent role she has in a story.

For a while, I thought that Use of Weapons was going to be about the toll that war takes from its soldiers, and other participants. That this skilfully written story would submerge itself into its character, Zakalwe especially, and show the true long term damage left by all the scars of war, physical and psychological.

It sort of does. 

But I haven't mentioned the other characters, the ones from his childhood.

The gut punch delivered by the eventual unfolding of the book's story is only incidentally about war. It's a bleak message, of how our birth, upbringing, nurture or lack of nurture, govern almost everything about our lives. The real scars go right back to the start of our lives, and it's a rare thing if someone can escape them.

I think I may have just read one of science fiction's greatest books.