Call number
Series
Genres
Publication
Pages
Description
Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML: 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 towards 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. Ferociously intelligent, both witty and horrific, USE OF WEAPONS is a masterpiece of science fiction..… (more)
Awards
Language
Original language
Original publication date
Physical description
ISBN
Similar in this library
User reviews
As with 'Consider Phlebas', re-reading the novel brought out aspects that would not be so clear on a a first read. In "Consider Phlebas", it was the opening sentence "The ship didn't even have a name", which means nothing on a first read, but knowing what we now do about Culture ships and the peculiarities of their naming, becomes a jaw-dropper. In "Use of weapons", the re-reader's senses aren't sledgehammered in quite the same way, but the chair motif becomes very obvious once you know to look for it. (And in case you failed to appreciate it, the UK paperback has actually got a chair on the cover. Nought out of ten for not spoon-feeding the reader, there...)
Cheradanine Zakalwe is the ultimate mercenary, a man of resourcefulness mixed with martial skills, wit and not a little compassion - though that compassion does have its limits, and other characters do well not to cross those limits. Yet I found many aspects of him echoed Banks' own personality - the dry humour, the hotel explorations (this I can personally vouch for) and the attempts to write poetry. There is a lot of humour in this book - the Culture operative Diziet Sma and her side-kick drone Skeffan-Amtiskaw are a great double act.
As with so many Banks novels, there is a twist at the end (a double twist, in fact), though Zakalwe's choice of alias in the middle of the book does make one wonder a little, and might be considered to be a bit of a spoiler. But Banks plays a blinder with one of the books' other motifs and the resolution of that motif, and the kernel of the character, still comes as a shock and a surprise.
My Orbit 2nd impression hardback was not proof-read; someone ran a spell-checker on the MS but didn't understand the limitations spell-checkers have. In a few places, I had to read back over a couple of lines to get the context so I could figure out the likeliest word that Banks meant to put instead of what the publisher ended up printing. Still, despite my muttering darkly over some of the errors, it did not spoil my enjoyment of what I suspect Banks himself thought of as "a humongous great Culture romp". This is certainly one of the prime candidates for that honour.
His latest mission involves finding and bringing out an old scholar who lives like a hermit in the University of an old City. He is the key figure in order to avoid a full scale war, ideological at its source, between those who believe machines have souls and those who don't. A war that threatens to drive a whole Cluster of stars and planets to chaos.
But Zakalwe's past is full of horrors that haunt his very existence. Missions from the past, the way he got Contacted by the Culture's agents and above all his family story and a war he fought himself - his first war -, not for the Culture, but for the existence and prosperity of his own people.
A superbly written story with an unexpected twist in the end. Space Opera at its finest!
I also rather liked the fact that "Use of Weapons" resembles many other modern war stories in that, despite our main characters' centrality to his own story and his heroic efforts, he finds himself, at the end of the day, to be something of a bit player in a conflict he cannot influence or understand. This is a pretty subtle take on what I suspect is often the reality of mechanized warfare, and it's a welcome contrast to a book that, despite its best efforts, often seems too loud and flashy for its own good. I think, honestly, that my beef might be with the science fiction genre as a whole. Despite the writer's obvious talent and the obvious care that he put into his narrative, Zakalwe comes off as terribly similar to many other modern science fiction heroes: that is, a near-invincible cybernetic superman troubled by a tragic past whose scars won't heal. It doesn't sound so bad when you put it that way, but there aren't any emotions here that aren't amped up to eleven and, after a while, that gets sort of wearying. The best I can say is that Banks's talent for describing the more mundane aspects of a super-advanced society and his decision to set "Use of Weapons" on an arid planet in a sleepy, distant part of the galaxy does tend to even things out. I liked this one, sure, but I may be approaching my limit for these kinds of books. Maybe I should go read some Dickens or something.
Cheradenine Zakalwe is the agent in this story and his minders are Diziet Sma a human operative and the drone (highly sophisticated thinking macine) Skaffen-Amtiskaw as in other books in the series the humans have a love/hate relationship with the machines. This particular novel in the series is more concerned with telling an exciting story than exploring the relationship between the humans and the machines. Banks fills in the back story of Zakalwe by telling stories within the central story of some of his previous missions and they are exciting tales in their own write and build up to the climax of the final twist in the tale. Banks is a good thriller writer and his hero’s have to undergo extreme physical privations; usually viscerally described before they can be allowed to escape: in this novel Zakalwe is decapitated before eventually being rescued.
It has to be said that some of the stories are starting to get a bit familiar, but perhaps the strong central story is enough to see this book through. I was hoping that Banks would explore further the relationship between the machines and the humans, but apart from a conversation between Zakalwe and Tsoldrin (the man who he is on a mission to rescue) any deeper probing gives way to the adventure story with Zakalwe shrugging his shoulders and saying “I never try to second guess the Culture” There was enough in the imaginative writing of Banks to keep me interested, but only just for this second reading of the novel. Twenty years ago I would have probably rated this novel as 3.5 stars but today only three.
I made 2 crucial mistakes! :
1) I did not check to see that this was a 3rd book in a series, which robbed me of the not necessarily obligatory, but at least orientating background information on the Culture
2) I did not take a good look at the Contents page!
The Author alternated the pieces of the main story and flashbacks into the past. Except the flashbacks are going backwards in time from more recent going towards the beginning of the main character's ordeal.
Therefore it was very confusing until about halfway when I more or less got my bearings (and only later discovering the contents page LOL).
In the end though, I did realize the value in structuring book that way.
As far as the story goes, - the author did try to paint a wide picture across many worlds, many conflicts (in the "flashback" portions), but in my mind they did not gel together into one cohesive whole, and only the main story-line went on smoothly. But towards the last chapters - the story really triumphed, melded together, and then surprised me quite unexpectedly (even disturbed a bit).
And only upon completing the book did I start liking it a lot, and went back thinking to different moments of the story, trying to tease out more connections, meanings, reasons.
So - YES - it IS worth persevering towards the very end!
The chronological structure of Use of Weapons is curious and effective. It alternates two series of numbered chapters, one running forward in time and counting up (One, Two, Three ...), the other running backward and counting down (XIII, XII, XI ...). The earliest episode of the novel takes place at its midpoint in chapter VII during a set of flashbacks, but these are not given their full context until the end of the book. The most recent events are set into bracketing Prologue and Epilogue passages, along with a short postfactory chapter "States of War."
This volume was for some reason longer than I had expected it to be, and although it read at a good pace, it took a lot of attention to complete. I'm looking forward to the change of tempo offered by the next in the series, State of the Art, which collects short stories in the Culture setting.
Clever, violent and intensely ambiguous at times, Banks is now perfecting his technique. Time in the story always seems to pass at "real time" rates for me. Perhaps it's because the writing draws me in and I end up whizzing through the book very quickly,
A slightly confusing mixed up narrative flow with flash backs and flash forwards, didn't add anything to the read for me.
He now starts to touch on morality with a deft flourish which he will use more in later works.
A cracking good read
I've got a couple of problems with the ending, but I never would have made it that far without enjoying the journey to get there so no real harm done. My problems:
The story takes place within the universe of The Culture, but the ships and the manipulative cliques don't
Like the preceding books, Weapons is narrated in 3P omniscient, primarily following two sets of characters: the first a mercenary hired by Special Circumstances (so complicit with Culture and to a significant extent of it, but not precisely for it); the second,
I read from the 1992 UK edition (Orbit paperback), no supplements. Allegedly Banks wrote the basic story prior to inventing the Culture universe, and retconned it for publication; there was no editorial commentary providing detail on that.
Originally believed this to be my first Culture novel, read circa 2005; but upon finishing think I had not read this one. Precisely my decision to read through Culture in order.
//
Banks continues with the unorthodox format in this third Culture novel, this time interleaving chapters from two separate storylines, and sequencing the second storyline back to front. He's clever about it: no explicit mention or accounting of it, but the storylines are numbered separately (one in Arabic, the other in Roman numerals), and the second storyline's opening chapter is Chapter XIII. Not all Culture books have a Table of Contents, I suspect this one does to help clarify this structure. (I was reminded of Michel Gondry's striking music video for Cibo Matto's "Sugar Water" but could never quite wrap my head around Banks's intertwined plot lines, to ascertain whether anything similar was happening.)
Banks adds a few wrinkles, perhaps prompted when editing the story to fit the Culture universe. There are a confusing number of prologues and epilogues; and one (a prologue) situated "out of place", as it were. For reference, characters named in these include: Diziet Sma; Cullis & Zakalwe (unclear if the original or the "enfranchised" version of the mercenary); Shias Engin (relating the same vignette between Cullis & Zakalwe); Diziet Sma & Mr Escoerea. The shifts in narration between these separate bits suggest that one or more of these names may refer to the same person, or persons.
But the use of any weapon raises moral questions. {1} Phrased this way, the title is clever and pointed, not entirely "what it says on the tin", but a nod to Banks's continued reflection on the place of coercion and violence in a society purporting to be peaceful and inclusive. Flashbacks and characters telling stories offer plenty of opportunity to comment on various moral dilemmas and scenarios. [viz 160] At one point, a vignette in which Zakalwe becomes a reclusive poet, peaceful, and accidentally kills a bird's eggs so then mercy-kills the hen, subsequently giving up being a poet as futile -- and wraps all this up, just before abandoning his reclusive life, by killing an overseer whom he had watched beat & mutilate an enslaved person attempting to escape. This entire episode echoes an earlier part of Zakalwe's backstory, with a human despot replacing the bird. The novel is rife with these moral-tales-on-morality, or parables, both large and small.
As the Culture looks out at the less-sophisticated parts of the galaxy, it sees so much unnecessary misery and cruelty. War, despotism, disease, violence. Occasionally, the opportunity arises to help - discreetly, with carefully placed interventions.
and
helping other societies seems to go along with imposing the Culture's values on them. {1} This novel (it is early in the series) suggests that Culture's mission statements are marketing and aspirational, more than they are descriptions of standard procedure. Certainly, we meet many characters who appear to believe precisely that.
Some additional details on Culture tech, including body augmentation and glanding (snap, calm, and recall mentioned specifically); and colour-denoted emotions for drones ("olive & purple" a favourite, indicating awe). Evidently CSV's are large and complex enough that not one but three Minds control it. New ship configurations included a Demilitarised Rapid Offensive Unit (Xenophobe); and other named Minds include GSVs Congenital Optimist and What Are The Civilian Applications; CSV Size Isn't Everything; GOV Sweet And Full Of Grace; GCU Very Little Gravitas Indeed; and unspecified classes Just Testing and Absent Friends.
At one point it's stated that Culture doesn't have (economic) inflation -- which I suppose is implied by the post-scarcity structure, but I would not have inferred that on my own. At two points, Earth is referenced explicitly (a date in the "Khmer calendar" in a Prologue, a reference to U.S. corporal punishment in Chapter V) -- the first confirmation that Earth is included in the Culture universe.
//
SYNOPSIS | A Culture mercenary, Zakalwe, is brought out of retirement to help avoid interstellar war following collapse in negotiations. In flashback we get backstory from some of Zakalwe's prior missions, as well as something that happened before he worked for Diziet Sma and Skaffen-Amtiskaw, his Culture handlers. It all comes crashing together at the end, a twist with a sting in its tale.
{1} dukedom_enough LT review for Use of Weapons
The Culture is a civilization set far in the future. It is utopian, with everlasting life and no scarcity of resources. In addition to humanoids, the Culture is populated by sentient artificial intelligence, both in the form of bots and ships. Any needs and even desires are met instantly. Interstellar travel is the norm, though there is no explanation for how this occurs or why there is no time dilation, as communication occurs easily, over many light years.
This novel largely focuses on two people. Most prominently featured is Cheradenine Zakalwe, a mercenary operating under the Special Circumstances branch of Culture. Zakalwe is called in whenever some especially dirty work needs to be done, primarily militarily, as “official” Culture operatives are seemingly disallowed from behaving in such a manner.
The second character is Diziet Sma, Zakalwe’s Culture handler, who dispatches and then frequently is forced to rescue him at the end of his assignments.
The book is a little bit hard to follow, as chapters alternate between the “current” assignment and flashbacks into Zakalwe’s past, which feature previous adventures and childhood memories. This became a problem for me, as I frequently read 20-30 pages/night, sometimes missing a day or two. That doesn’t work well with this book, which needs to be consumed in larger chunks over a shorter period of time, if one wants to maintain a grasp on the storyline.
Bottom line, I enjoyed A Player of Games quite a bit more, but will proceed with additional Culture novels.
As it stands, this one seems a little more complex, although that might have something to do with the way the chapters
Like "Consider Phlebas" this one is action packed novel following a rather tragical
Excellent adventure. Highly recommended.
I thought the novel never quite gripped in the way it seemed it should. Zakalwe is never developed enough and the surprise near the end raises as many
Sma and Skaffen-Amtiskaw are the only other characters present throughout the novel but they're sadly under used. Sma never develops into the sort of dark character she could and, sadly, simply too little is seen of Skaffen-Amtiskaw whose (fully authorised) violent tendencies could have sat nicely next to Mawhrin-Skel's (from the previous Culture novel).
If poor use of its main characters is Use of Weapons' biggest failing then the plot isn't great either. Honestly, very little reason is given to care about what happens in Beychae's system. Full scale war might break out but so what? With the greater personal involvement of its characters the small scale events of TPoG felt much more important. Even Consider Phlebas, which I am not that keen on, felt like it had a plot with more at stake (even if that book admits that's not the case).
As mentioned above, Zakalwe's chapters aren't always that interesting either. Instead it's the odd good bit here and there that keeps you pushing through the novel. For instance, I very much enjoyed the all too brief time spent on the Xenophobe or the time spent with Zakalwe in the eyrie. It simply feels like there's too little imperative to the plot and the long time spent by Sma getting to Zakalwe in the present is cheapened by the fact he so readily agrees to take on the mission.
Well with plot and characters already done what's left? Banks's writing is decent but it felt more jumbled than in TPoG (and what with the abundance of unneccessary semi-colons?). The author's admission that this was an old story re-written perhaps explains why. Consider Phlebas, another old novel he got published some time after he first wrote it, seemed to suffer similar problems. If TPoG was written from scratch much later than these other two Culture novels it might explain why it seems so much better.
As usual, I've fallen into one of my traps - pointing out all the things I disliked without touching on the good. After all this it may seem as if I want to give UoW a mere half-star rating. Yet it is a lot better than that. The plot and characters could have done with more work but nothing in the book is bad. The story has its moments and the final revelations certainly make a lot of what came before more important, in retrospect. Possibly, when re-read the book might shine much brighter. However, I'd still like to read the rest of the Culture series first, so it might be a while before I get back to this one.
Interviews with Banks implied that this was the story the Culture was originally created for; in my opinion, it's the definitive work in that series.