Excession

An extremely good novel! This was (marginally) my favourite of all of Iain M. Bank's amazing novels of The Culture.

It was a major challenge to keep track of all of the ships, and who was messaging whom, and who was plotting with whom - certainly beyond my capabilities. I would have rated it even higher but for my inability to stay abreast of everybody all of the time.

I made copious notes on various ships, but concluded that I would have needed much more copious notes (as well as an AI with a copious amount of memory!) to pick up all of the clues that the author was providing about where the plot was headed. But hey, I can still enjoy the novel, even if I don't discover ahead of time that it was the ship Colonel Mustard who executed the ship Miss Scarlet with the collusion of Professor Plum in the galactic Library until the last apge.

As is often mentioned, this is NOT the novel with which to start your exploration of The Culture. It really does not make a great deal of difference where you start, as there is no particular advantage in proceeding chronologically, and there are no continued characters. A number of sources suggest starting with The Player of Games (technically the second book), because it eases you into the overall setting of the novels. I would tend to agree, and that's what I did - but I would have had no problem myself diving right in with Consider Phlebas technically the first book).

However - just remember to keep on going with the series - if one novel is not to your liking, the next one just might hit the spot! My least-favourite novels in the series were Look to Windward and Use of Weapons, but I would still consider both of them to be worthwhile.