Matter [ペーパーバック]

For the purposes of this review, I will assume the reader is already familiar with the Culture series of novels. If you have not read this series before: "Player of Games" and "Consider Phlebas" are both better introductions (and better reads).
This book has a very complex plot and a huge cast of characters. The Glossary and Cast of Characters alone are nearly 20 pages. To simplify greatly, the story follows three characters: the two sons and single daughter of King Hausk, lord of Sarl, a technologically backwards (approximately 19th century) land inside a "ShellWorld"...an ancient, artifical world of nested levels like Russian dolls, complete with nuclear suns and a variety of unique landscapes. The daughter (Djan) has long been away, adopted into the Culture and recruited into Special Circumstances. When their father is killed, one brother (Ferbin) flees their home looking for help from another SC agent who once helped their family, or failing that, his sister. The other brother (Oramen), unaware of his brother's fate or the great personal danger he is in, stays behind as prince Regent. Meanwhile Djan is travelling home upon hearing of her father's death.
Ferbin travels outward: literally out of the interior of the Shellworld, out into space; and figuratively outward from a cultural backwater into the enormous domain of the Culture. Meanwhile, Djan is following the opposite course, inwards from the expanses of the Culture to her old home. While Banks does an excellent job of developing the unique personalities and backgrounds of the 3 characters, they are primarily used to reflect on the universe he has created. Ferbin is the simple provincial, exposed to and struggling to understand the size and technological wonders of the Culture, while Djan is the sophisticated citizen of the galaxy through whose eyes we can see the Culture as it sees itself. The story of Oramen meanwhile allows Banks to describe their peculiar Shellworld home and contrast petty local politics with the grand scale of the greater universe. The book ends up almost reading as related travelogues. Having three characters in very different settings allows free rein to Banks's imagination as he conjures up world after world, alien race after alien race, technogical marvels, magnificient landscapes and colorful peoples.
The title of the book comes from one character's pessimistic philosophy: we must be living in a totally materialistic universe, because no created universe with a purpose could be so miserable and random. The central plot is around politics in Sarl, but the events, so grandly important and historic to the kings and princes of that land, are unnoticeably trivial on the galactic scale. Banks reinforces this by having the Sarl be patrons of a space-faring race called the Oct, but they in turn are backwards clients of the Nariscene who are further clients of the Morthanveld who are peer to the Culture. Even the God of the Sarl is merely a representative of one of the ancient galatic cultures, and not a particularly formidable one. For a science fiction book, Matter contains a lot of thinking about the meaning and purpose of life.
Unfortunately, after nearly 500 pages of exploring the Shellworld, the galaxy, a series of ancient mysteries and the psyches of its major characters, the book rushes to a unsatisfactory conclusion. I do not mean that there is no happy ending...this is Banks after all and the only thing predictable about the ending is that it is unpredictable. That is the great merit of the plot. Rather, the ending is highly anticlimactic. The book ends with a literal bang, but the buildup has gone on so long that tying it all up in 80 pages is far too brief and disappointing. After spending whole chapters on conversations in pubs and descriptions of making travel arrangements, Banks starts skipping over major events like battles and the deaths of major characters...dismissing them with asides and after-the-facts. This compression continues to the very end, where major events transpire in pages and finally paragraphs. This may be the final expression of the book's philosophy: the reduction of major characters and plot-lines to throw away sentences, but it feels more like Banks ran out of space or time. That a character in the last few pages is literally a God in a Machine may be clever, but does not excuse the Deus ex Machina feeling of the end.
I enjoyed the descriptions of the Culture, the Shellworld, etc. But it took too long, and the ending is unsatisfactory on many levels. "Matter" is well written...on a page by page basis ranking with Banks's best, but I can't ever imagine wanting to re-read it or recommend it to someone who isn't a Culture devotee...thus my 3 star rating.

As a great fan of Ian Banks and the Culture series, I could read 600 or 6000 pages without finding it too long and many of the ideas (such as Shellworlds and the mystery of their purpose) are quite interesting and fun. But Matter has such a rushed and sketchy ending that it's ultimately unsatisfying. If the brief ending is intended to tell us how fragile life is and how war really occurs, then this is done in a way that is pretty sophomoric and not very compelling. Also, many of the characters seem underdeveloped and none, other than a few AIs, are very sympathetic. And without spoiling the ending any further, to have a god-like (apparent) bad guy AI tricked in a simple fashion by the (apparent and frankly not very compelling) hero seems almost silly. Altogether, it feels like the publisher got antsy about the deadline and said "turn in your work now!" when it wasn't really finished. Too bad, because this is one of the most creative and stimulating Sci Fi series out there and Matter v2.0 could have been quite good.

I've finally finished "Matter", the latest "Culture" novel by Iain M. Banks. It's been three years since his last book, "The Algebraist", about which I had very mixed feelings. Like many of Banks' readers, I was hoping for a return to a more confident kind of story-telling, without the inconsistencies that had marred "The Algebraist".

Overall, I enjoyed it a great deal. Structurally, it has a familiar pattern: three journeys, party in space but mostly of self-discovery, that lead up to a singular point of crisis. Sounds a bit like "Lord of the Rings", doesn't it? Unlike "LotR", the protagonists are three siblings, but as in Tolkien's work the journeys are the main point of the tale. The revelation of the true nature of the crisis, and the climactic confrontation, are compressed into the last few pages. The dénouement is crudely perfunctory; a brief epilogue that follows an appendix, and almost seems to parody the close of Tolkien's "Return of the King".

Although the narrative is populated with familiar elements from earlier "Culture" novels, "Matter" keeps scratching some of the itches that affected Banks in "The Algebraist". There is a cynical undercurrent about the illusion of "progress", together with a determined attempt to destroy any comfortable identification that we might make between ourselves and any particular part of his menagerie. Perhaps you remember the wonderful quote by Sir Martin Rees, the British astronomer:
"It will not be humans who witness the demise of the Sun six billion years hence; it will be entities as different from us as we are from bacteria."

Banks confronts us with a universe whose population spans a vast spectrum of capabilities, of intentions, of possibilities. And with that variety there is inevitably going to be confusion, frustration and mutual incomprehension. As in "The Algebraist", there are dead ends and unexplained elements. This is an important aspect of Banks' world that needs to be conveyed, but some of the protagonists' confusion winds up spilling over to the reader.

"Matter" feels more explicitly violent than earlier books by Banks; it's as if he's been reading Scalzi and other mil-sci-fi writers. This is not a criticism, just an observation. There is a deliberate "compare and contrast" between traditional warfare - think 17th century Europe with a dash of steam-punk - and conflict in a future of robotic weaponry and smart, morphing armour:

"In the unlikely event we do get involved in a serious firefight and the suits think you're under real threat," Djan Seriy had told the two Sarl men, "they'll take over. High-end exchanges happen too fast for human reactions so the suits will do the aiming, firing and dodging for you." She'd seen the expressions of dismay on their faces, and shrugged. "It's like all war; months of utter boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. It's just the moments are sometimes measured in milliseconds and the engagement's often over before you're aware it has even begun."
("Matter", p.474)

So if "The Algebraist" was a three-and-a-half star book, "Matter" is a solid four-star effort, and as I think about it over the next few days I may add another half star. Definitely recommended; I hope we don't have to wait another three years for the next one.