Culture: The Hydrogen Sonata (Hardcover)

from livingtech

Enjoyed this quite a bit, but the end was mildly unsatisfying. The journey was pretty fun, lots of fun twists and turns, even if they didn't really pay off so much as just keep me entertained along the way. Lots of ambiguous evil and folks getting away with various murders. :p

from Vermilious

The Hydrogen Sonata, for better or worse, will always be the last Culture book. The death of Iain M. Banks hovers over the whole book, impossible to escape even three years out. Some of that is the effect of the subject of the book, and some of it happens in the action, but that sense of death, o...

from Phrim

In The Hydrogen Sonata, we learn the story of the Gzilt, a civilization as old as the Culture itself that is on the verge of Subliming, or ascending to a higher plan of existence--something that advanced civilizations of a certain age tend to do. However, rumors of a long-lost secret surface, one...

from RobertDay

This latest excursion into the universe of The Culture is a hunt for a particular McGuffin. Many have commented on the fact that a big part of the McGuffin gets revealed early on in the book, and so the plot loses much in the way of tension. Well, that may well be true; but rather like 'Excession...

from eldang

Excellent Culture yarn that now feels more like a swan song than I think Banks could have intended, because it deals mostly with what happens when a civilisation feels it can't progress any more. Lots of intersecting subplots hinging around who knows what and the limits to even the god-like Cultu...