Excession (Culture, #5)

500 pages

English language

Published March 14, 1998

ISBN:
978-0-553-57537-8
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Goodreads:
12013

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Two and a half millennia ago, the artifact appeared in a remote corner of space, beside a trillion-year-old dying sun from a different universe. It was a perfect black-body sphere, and it did nothing. Then it disappeared.

Now it is back.

6 editions

Solid space opera

Solid space opera, but construction (how Banks creates suspense and mystery) and message ("more humility, less competition") are a little in-the-face ("man merkt die Absicht und ist verstimmt"). Good: how Banks deals with identity, memory and guilt.

Didn't mesh with the audio narrator

I know it's not fair to the book itself, but I struggled to finish this one because the narrator's voice did not agree with my ears. It's quite interesting overall, a bit complex but I think necessarily so given the topic.