Title: Surface DetailAuthor: Iain M. Banks
Publisher: Orbit
4/5
The devil is in the details. Actually, several are in Surface Detail, which is fitting, because the book itself is obsessed with details.
[I'm trying to cut down the self-indulgent crap, and answer the questions that actually matter]
What's it about?
Breezy dialogue (by either smart-arse AIs or idiots in over their heads), balls-out techno-blitzkrieg battles, and densely detailed, borderline obsessive-compulsive world-building. There's some stuff about virtual reality heavens and hells, a virtual war being fought to shut down the latter, and a reincarnated woman out for revenge on her murderer, but that's just to keep the cheap seats happy.
What's it like?
Spending 10 years in Banks's hyper-advanced Culture setting. Gives you an ever-escalating series of imaginative and outlandish settings, in a kind of literary tinnitus that fills each page with vision after stupendous vision. Catnip for the devotee, but bafflingly self-indulgent to everyone else.
Is it any good?
Mostly yes, but leavened with bouts of dullness, unless you like your SciFi chattier than Stephen Fry's twitter page.
