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Use of Weapons
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 13 hrs and 29 mins
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Publisher's summary
The man known as Cheradenine Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances' foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks, and military action.
The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him toward his present eminence, but despite all their dealings she did not know him as well as she thought.
The drone known as Skaffen-Amtiskaw knew both of these people. It had once saved the woman's life by massacring her attackers in a particularly bloody manner. It believed the man to be a lost cause. But not even its machine could see the horrors in his past.
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Best Sci Fi Fun anywhere!
- By A. Foxter on 07-07-15
By: Brian Daley
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The Forge of God
- By: Greg Bear
- Narrated by: Stephen Bel Davies
- Length: 16 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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On September 28th, a geologist working in Death Valley finds a mysterious new cinder cone in very well-mapped area. On October 1, the government of Australia announces the discovery of an enormous granite mountain. Like the cinder cone, it wasn't there six months ago.
Something is happening to planet Earth, and the truth is too terrifying to contemplate
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Great Story, Wonderful Listening, But the Editor?
- By George Knight on 07-14-13
By: Greg Bear
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Void Star
- By: Zachary Mason
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Tristan Morris, Sean Pratt, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Not far in the future, the seas have risen, and the central latitudes are emptying. But it's still a good time to be rich in San Francisco, where weapons drones patrol the skies to keep out the multitudinous poor.
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if you're That Guy
- By Zachary on 06-18-17
By: Zachary Mason
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Dead Man's Land
- By: Robert Ryan
- Narrated by: Richard Burnip
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Deep in the trenches of Flanders Fields, men are dying in the thousands every day. So one more death shouldn't be a surprise. But then a body turns up with bizarre injuries, and Sherlock Holmes' former sidekick, Dr. John Watson - unable to fight for his country due to injury but able to serve it through his medical expertise - finds his suspicions raised.
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Watson is wonderful, amid very grim surroundings
- By L. Gutman on 03-01-18
By: Robert Ryan
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The Ninth Rain
- The Winnowing Flame Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Jen Williams
- Narrated by: Jot Davies
- Length: 20 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Jen Williams, acclaimed author of The Copper Cat trilogy, featuring The Copper Promise, The Iron Ghost and The Silver Tide, returns with the first in a blistering new trilogy. The great city of Ebora once glittered with gold. Now its streets are stalked by wolves. Tormalin the Oathless has no taste for sitting around waiting to die while the realm of his storied ancestors falls to pieces - talk about a guilt trip. Better to be amongst the living, where there are taverns full of women and wine.
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Couldn’t put it down!
- By Renae on 09-09-22
By: Jen Williams
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Gravity's Rainbow
- By: Thomas Pynchon, Frank Miller - cover design
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 37 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.
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"Time to touch the person next to you"
- By Jefferson on 07-04-16
By: Thomas Pynchon, and others
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InterWorld
- By: Neil Gaiman, Michael Reaves
- Narrated by: Christopher Evan Welch
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Joey Harker isn't a hero. In fact, he's the kind of guy who gets lost in his own house. But then one day, Joey gets really lost. He walks straight out of his world and into another dimension. Joey's walk between the worlds makes him prey to two terrible forces: armies of magic and science who will do anything to harness his power to travel between dimensions.
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A good listen
- By Gurmukh on 10-31-07
By: Neil Gaiman, and others
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TimeRiders
- By: Alex Scarrow
- Narrated by: Aaron Landon
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Maddy should have died in a plane crash. Liam should have died at sea when the Titanic sank. Sal should have died in a tragic fire. But a mysterious man whisked them away to safety. Maddy, Liam, and Sal quickly learn that time travel is no longer just a hope for the future; it is a dangerous reality. And they weren't just rescued from their terrible fates…they were recruited for the agency of TimeRiders created to protect the world from those seeking to alter the course of history for personal gain.
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Rather mundane story, not very scifi
- By DoctorMu on 01-24-16
By: Alex Scarrow
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The Reluctant Adventures of Fletcher Connolly on the Interstellar Railroad
- By: Felix R. Savage
- Narrated by: Nick Podehl
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Fletcher Connolly hasn't got a lot to lose. Since he and half the galaxy signed on to the rat race of the technological relics trade, Fletch has come to terms with the idea that he will join the ranks of unlucky explorers that perish light years from home without a dime to his name. But bankruptcy is a great motivator. With friends and family counting on him to strike it rich, Fletch embarks on an unwilling quest for alien treasure.
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I wanted to love this book, but I did like it
- By wag more on 07-26-18
By: Felix R. Savage
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Finally an Iain M. Banks book on audible...
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It is 4034 AD. Humanity has made it to the stars. Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year.
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A man lies in a coma after a near-fatal accident. His body broken, his memory vanished, he finds himself in the surreal world of the bridge - a world free of the usual constraints of time and space, a world where dream and fantasy, past and future, fuse. Who is this man? Where is he? Is he more dead than alive? Or has he never been so alive before?
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Sci-fi fans might skip, but it’s fantastic and well crafted
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Six million years ago, at the very dawn of the starfaring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones: the shatterlings. Sent out into the galaxy, these shatterlings have stood aloof as they document the rise and fall of countless human empires. They meet every 200,000 years to exchange news and memories of their travels with their siblings.
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Science fiction in Deep time
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Eighteen-year-old Kit is weird: big, strange, odd, socially disabled, on a spectrum that stretches from "highly gifted" at one end, to "nutter" at the other. At least Kit knows who his father is; he and Guy live together in a decaying country house on the unstable brink of a vast quarry. His mother's identity is another matter. Now, though, his father's dying, and old friends are gathering for one last time.
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By Iain Banks, not Iain M. Banks
- By Reader X on 05-19-18
By: Iain M. Banks
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Consider Phlebas: Booktrack Edition
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Music is super distracting and constant
- By Anonymous1234 on 06-17-20
By: Iain M. Banks
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There is a world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse. Such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organization with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers?
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Finally an Iain M. Banks book on audible...
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- Length: 24 hrs
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It is 4034 AD. Humanity has made it to the stars. Fassin Taak, a Slow Seer at the Court of the Nasqueron Dwellers, will be fortunate if he makes it to the end of the year.
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The Bridge
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A man lies in a coma after a near-fatal accident. His body broken, his memory vanished, he finds himself in the surreal world of the bridge - a world free of the usual constraints of time and space, a world where dream and fantasy, past and future, fuse. Who is this man? Where is he? Is he more dead than alive? Or has he never been so alive before?
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Sci-fi fans might skip, but it’s fantastic and well crafted
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Six million years ago, at the very dawn of the starfaring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones: the shatterlings. Sent out into the galaxy, these shatterlings have stood aloof as they document the rise and fall of countless human empires. They meet every 200,000 years to exchange news and memories of their travels with their siblings.
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Eighteen-year-old Kit is weird: big, strange, odd, socially disabled, on a spectrum that stretches from "highly gifted" at one end, to "nutter" at the other. At least Kit knows who his father is; he and Guy live together in a decaying country house on the unstable brink of a vast quarry. His mother's identity is another matter. Now, though, his father's dying, and old friends are gathering for one last time.
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By Iain Banks, not Iain M. Banks
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Dark Eden
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On the alien, sunless planet they call Eden, the 532 members of the Family shelter beneath the light and warmth of the Forest's lantern trees. Beyond the Forest lie the mountains of the Snowy Dark and a cold so bitter and a night so profound that no man has ever crossed it. The Oldest among the Family recount legends of a world where light came from the sky, where men and women made boats that could cross the stars. These ships brought us here, the Oldest say - and the Family must only wait for the travelers to return.
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Couldn't buy into it.
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In the 21st century, the perfection of faster-than-light travel and the rise of a prodigious artificial intelligence known as the Eschaton altered the course of humankind. New civilizations were founded across the vastness of space. Now, the technology-eschewing world known as the New Republic is besieged by an alien information plague. Earth quickly sends a battle fleet - but is it coming to the rescue, or is a sinister plot in motion?
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Gonzo giggleworthy geekitude
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Don't Buy this Abominable Abridgement
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When prospector Bob Broadhead went out to Gateway on the Heechee spacecraft, he decided he would know which was the right mission to make him his fortune. Three missions later, now famous and permanently rich, Robinette Broadhead has to face what happened to him and what he is...in a journey into himself as perilous and even more horrifying than the nightmare trip through the interstellar void that he drove himself to take!
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A human-focused SF classic
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Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself. With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. But as he closes in on the secret, a killer closes in on him because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason.
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Defeated
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Stonemouth
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Stewart Gilmour is back in Stonemouth. After five years in exile his presence is required at the funeral of patriarch Joe Murston, and even though the last time Stu saw the Murstons he was running for his life, staying away might be even more dangerous than turning up. An estuary town north of Aberdeen, Stonemouth, with its five mile beach, can be beautiful on a sunny day. On a bleak one it can seem to offer little more than seafog, gangsters, cheap drugs and a suspension bridge irresistible to suicides.
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Pretty Offensive Stuff
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Eversion
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In the 1800s, a sailing ship crashes off the coast of Norway. In the 1900s, a Zepellin explores an icy canyon in Antarctica. In the far future, a spaceship sets out for an alien artifact. Each excursion goes horribly wrong. And on every journey, Dr. Silas Coade is the physician, but only Silas seems to realize that these events keep repeating themselves. And it's up to him to figure out why and how. And how to stop it all from happening again.
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An entirely new level of science fiction
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Three hundred years from now, Earth has been rendered uninhabitable due to the technological catastrophe known as the Nanocaust. Archaeologist Verity Auger specializes in the exploration of its surviving landscape. Now, her expertise is required for a far greater purpose. Something astonishing has been discovered at the far end of a wormhole: mid-twentieth-century Earth, preserved like a fly in amber.
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One of John Lee's best performances
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A Fire Upon the Deep
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A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function.
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What a wild, wacky, awesome book!
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Permutation City
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The good news is that you have just awakened into Eternal Life. You are going to live forever. Immortality is a reality. A medical miracle? Not exactly. The bad news is that you are a scrap of electronic code. The world you see around you, the you that is seeing it, has been digitized, scanned, and downloaded into a virtual reality program. You are a Copy that knows it is a copy. The good news is that there is a way out.
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Amazing book. Amazingly bad narrator.
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The Prefect
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Tom Dreyfus is a Prefect, a law enforcement officer with the Panoply. His beat is the multifaceted utopian society of the Glitter Band, that vast swirl of space habitats orbiting the planet Yellowstone, the teeming hub of a human interstellar empire spanning many worlds. His current case: investigating a murderous attack against one of the habitats that left 900 people dead, a crime that appalls even a hardened cop like Dreyfus.
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Best yet of the Revelation Space series
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Diaspora
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- Unabridged
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Behold the orphan. Born into a world that is not a world. A digital being grown from a mind seed, a genderless cybernetic citizen in a vast network of probes, satellites, and servers knitting the Solar System into one scape, from the outer planets to the fiery surface of the Sun. Since the Introdus in the 21st century, humanity has reconfigured itself drastically. Most chose immortality, joining the polises to become conscious software.
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Fabulous Story, Disappointing Performance
- By Ben on 12-08-13
By: Greg Egan
What listeners say about Use of Weapons
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Ken
- 05-12-13
Tips on how to listen to this novel - NO SPOILERS
This is one of the Culture Series books, best introduced by "Player of Games" if the series is not familiar. Use of Weapons has a complex, non-linear structure that can be difficult to follow in audio format. The prolog establishes an event at a particular point in time, call it time t-zero. The story then begins at time t plus 13 and is told in alternating chapters, half of them moving backward toward t-zero, and the other half moving forward from time t plus 13. You arrive at the end of the book when the backward narrative reaches t-zero just as the forward narrative reaches a climax that reveals the real meaning of the events in the prolog. It is cleverly done, but you really do have to pay attention. This one is not for casual listening while you multitask. I would also suggest re-listening to the beginning of the book after you have finished it. Knowing the whole story really changes the meaning of the events at the book's opening. Brilliantly done, and exquisitely handled by Peter Kenny, who does not just read the book, he performs the story.
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80 people found this helpful
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- Ryan
- 10-08-13
Good, but possibly overrated
This would my fourth Iain M. Banks Culture novel, and I enjoyed it well enough, though I’m not sure I understand the reverence that many hold for the man’s work. I find his books thought-provoking, but also somewhat self-indulgent and not as deep as everyone seems to think they are. Also, I’m skeptical that the Culture would *work*. Would immensely intelligent machines feel motivated to care for huge populations of human dependents, who do little besides consume resources and amuse themselves? Maybe, but it’s debatable. Personally, I’d probably get bored with maintaining a tame ant colony and dump it in the woods to fend for itself.
That out of the way, I've been told that Use of Weapons is one of Banks’s best books, and I think that's probably true. The protagonist is a sort of 007-ish super agent named Zakalwe, whom the Culture has recruited to run coups and proxy wars in less advanced states that it’s trying to gradually bring into its benevolent sphere. Just as most Americans don’t pay much attention to the various dirty deeds the CIA does in the name of keeping them safe and comfortable, most Culture citizens are too wrapped up in their hobbies/drug use/grotesque parties to notice. However, all the wars are blurring together for Zakalwe and he’s getting a bit unhinged. A culture agent named Diziet Sma and the snarky drone that accompanies her (drones are a feature of all these books) manage to recruit him for another mission.
This novel is really a character study of Zakalwe, who is an expert warrior, but is haunted by events in his past, events which shed light on why he does what he does. And why he wants to stop, but maybe can’t. Towards this end, Banks wrote the book with an unusual structure. There are two narratives, the first moving forward in time, and the second moving backward (on a chapter-by-chapter basis -- think Memento) from the point where the first begins. Gradually, we get more and more hints about who Zakalwe really is, until a twist in the last pages puts what we know in a different light.
And here, I get to the arguable weaknesses of the book. First, readers seem divided on whether the twist is shockingly brilliant or just forced. I lean in the latter direction and would have liked the character motives to have been developed just a bit more. And while the twist raises some worthwhile questions about the moral meaning of one's actions, as well as about the Culture and its choices, it's the only really interesting thing going on in the plot. Everything else that happens until then is either just set-up or repeated expression of the theme that war is ultimately kind of meaningless. As in Player of Games (the Culture book you should start with), I felt that the point could have been made with a shorter novel. Lastly, I got a little bored with Banks’s use of societies that were basically just stand-ins for 20th/21st century Earth countries, with similar attitudes and patterns of life. Couldn't the aliens have been a little more, I dunno... exotic? Does everyone really proceed through the same technology tree?
I'd hardly call this a bad book, though. Banks was an undeniably intelligent and witty writer, and I'd give UOW a solid 3.5 stars. But, it often felt like the world-building, characters, and storytelling played second fiddle to the things the author wanted to get off his chest. As usual, I "read" this one in audio format, which, given the odd structure, requires paying close attention, but it's doable.
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15 people found this helpful
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- Nicholas
- 04-20-13
Audiobook might not be the right way to go.
The Culture series is one of my favorites, and this book is no exception (although Player of Games is still my favorite). Of the Culture books that I've read though, this one's story is the least linear and most disjointed, which, in my opinion is trickier to follow on audio.
The book is set up with an ongoing storyline in the present, with each chapter followed by a (critical) section detailing a portion of the main character's history, each section further and further into the past. It's a great way to tell a story, but I almost need to re-listen to this book now that I have a better picture of the story as a whole. Typically keeping everything straight isn't a problem for me when I just read a book and am able to speed up and slow down a little more naturally (compared to somebody reading to book to me at their pace).
That being said, if you enjoy the Culture series, I really do think that you'll enjoy this book too. Consider reading the book, and not listening to the audiobook, but either way, you'll still be pleased.
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13 people found this helpful
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- SciFi Kindle
- 05-16-13
Amazing Character Portrait
After over twenty years, this still holds up as a Sci-Fi masterpiece character study into the dark soul of its protagonist, a mercenary named Cheradenine Zakalwe. At first, the unusual story structure of two asynchronous story lines, alternating between the present and an episodic sequence of thirteen key moments in Zakalwe's past (revealed in reverse chronological order), can be confusing. However, it quickly clarifies, and is an absolutely ingenious way of examining the roots of the character's motives, phobias, and mannerisms in such a way that maximum surprise is extracted at each 'reveal'. Of course, as you've guessed from the profession of Mr. Zakalwe, there is no shortage of action throughout, and a good deal of James Bond 007 (I'm picturing Daniel Craig, not the other blokes). The biggest lost opportunity here was to explore, in the book's many settings and locales, some truly alien cultures, philosophies, and biologies, but sadly we see only a large collection of human civilizations in various stages of technological development. At least Gene Roddenberry slapped some prosthetic facial adornments on his humanoid aliens! Nevertheless, the story succeeds in elevating character over deus ex machina; no easy feat considering the persistent omnipotence of the Culture standing behind the mercenary, but here kept at a welcome arm's length, maintaining a high-stakes identification between the reader and the protagonist.
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- Connor
- 04-13-13
Fun Book with a Great Twist at the End
This is a Sci-Fi novel about a mercenary. He is employed by an advanced civilization that dislikes violence, but understands the necessity of force to maintain peace. The book contains two story lines. One follows the mercenary’s current life and the other his memories from the past. Begging the question, are humans are one part now and one part past?
I read this book when it was first published and was blown away by the civilization’s technology and the physical enhancements that people added to their bodies to improve quality of life. No surprise, many enhancements are designed for pleasure. Mine would be eating all my favorite foods without getting fat.
I particularly enjoy that machines (think cell phones, androids, toasters, etc) are sentient and enjoy interacting with humans much as I enjoy hanging out with a dog. What is that idiot going to do next? Let’s throw a ball and watch the dog chase it
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- Moore Creative
- 05-08-16
Top 10 Twist Endings Ever!
What made the experience of listening to Use of Weapons the most enjoyable?
Peter Kenny is a fantastic reader with a range in voices, inflection and intonation that I love. I've gone on to listen to other authors just because they're done by Peter Kenny. Thank you, sir, for being awesome.
What did you like best about this story?
I found this story because it was in a list of the Top 10 Best SciFi Twist Endings... I read those types of lists skeptically so when I saw other truly impressive stories on the list... you know, the kinds that instantly come to mind when you say "shocking twist ending that messes with your head" and you answer, "All You Zombies"... well, this was in that list and several others I respected were in the list so I gave Use of Weapons a try.
IT DID NOT DISAPPOINT.
Even knowing that it was supposed to have a twist left me guessing at each turn what might be the surprise and I was rewarded with several.
However, as a master of suspense and delivery, Ian Banks knows how to reward a reader, not in the last chapter, not in the last page, but in the last sentence at the last words of the whole novel he will blow your mind.
Which scene was your favorite?
There was a scene near the beginning where a mercenary killer, who you are introduced to over the course of the book, must deliver vengeance (or was it justice?) to a despot and during this, he outlines how he will let the man off, giving him hope for a decent future despite what he deserves... and then crushes that hope. It was a perfect outline for the character's personality and outlook.
Any additional comments?
Please don't read up too much on this story, don't accidentally spoil the ending for yourself, it truly is a worthwhile, enjoyable suspense.
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- Paul
- 10-20-14
Interesting, not exciting.
Banks' novels just don't excite me. They are OK, but I'm not seeing what a lot of other SF fans are seeing (obviously, from the ratings). Are there some interesting ideas? Yes. Are there some interesting sub-stories? Yes. But overall, this novel seemed plodding and dimensionless. Also, Banks' writing is bland. I do my best with every novel to keep in mind when it was written and state of the art at that time, so I give Banks some credit there. But overall I have to say it was only slightly better than OK.
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- Dan
- 05-05-13
Good Mystery w/ no Culture
What did you love best about Use of Weapons?
If your every listened to Banks novel "Consider Phlebas", well, you're in for the same kind of thing. If you want to hear a story told from the perspective of an AI persona -= THIS AINT IT. The story was well written (technique was 1st rate), but it did make me wish they would just tell me why the protagonist was so messed-up (you learn that at the VERY END of the story). Also, the narrator does a good job, as always. I have to say that I rated it a 4 (instead of a 5), because it was not up to the standard of other Culture novels such as "Player of Games" or "Surface Detail" (both 1st rate; buy them now if your haven't listened yet). But, I this novel was still a whole lot better than a lot of other stuff that I rated a 4.
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- Bill
- 01-19-19
Great book, but not for audio.
This really is a great book, but if you’re like me, and have replaced audio books with music, this book is best enjoyed the traditional way. It jumps around a lot, which gets a little muddy if you’re say, working on the house and listening at the same time. Normally, I’ll do this and catch 90% of what’s being said, rewind for something important I miss, or fill in the gaps of minor information missed as the book goes on, and it’s no problem. I’ve listened to books like A People’s History of the US, and Origin of Species like this, as well as sci-fi, bio’s, and whatever else, and it’s never been an issue until this book. There are essentially two stories, each of which have a lot going on, including flashbacks. This can get messy if you’re not 100% committed to listening.
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- Dave Matt
- 08-29-16
Peter Kenny is an amazing narrator for this book!
Would you listen to Use of Weapons again? Why?
I'm new to Iain Bank's Culture series (which comes highly recommended), and while the writing is very good, the narration by Peter Kenny is absolutely amazing. Each character is easily identifiable, and he does an excellent job handling the informal utterances / stream-of-consciousness portions of the writing which are often very difficult to handle in an audiobook.
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