Excession

The fifth book in the Culture universe. The Excession is a mysterious object that has appeared before, and disappeared, and is now back. A ship from a society outside of the Culture disappears and a group of Minds (ships) investigate. Meanwhile a subplot is in play of a Culture agent that is on a special assignment to steel a dormant soul who was there when the Excession first appeared all those years ago. This agent is an ambassador for the Culture to the Affront, who are a particularly nasty and vicious species.

All these plot lines come together in the end, but before they do the story can be a bit confusing and slow. The brilliance of the book is in the combination and culmination of all the subplots and story lines, and this Banks does extremely well. Like said in other reviews, I found it hard sometimes to keep track of all the ships that were communicating with each other, and also of the chronology of the story, but the ending more than made up for it. I really liked this Culture novel.