Use of Weapons (Culture #3) by Iain M. Banks

The book has two different stories, or rather the same long story - one part of which is going forward and one part going backward - in more or less alternate chapters. Thrown in are some flashbacks to even earlier events. Cheradenine Zakalwe is a man who isn’t originally from the Culture (a vastly advanced post-scarcity interstellar commonwealth mostly run by super intelligent artificial intelligences). The Special Circumstances, Culture’s military/espionage organization, has recruited him and he has worked in many different kinds of missions, being very successful. Now the Culture needs him for another mission, but he has managed to disappear from his trackers. He eventually consents to the mission if he gets the location of a certain woman. The forward-going chapters describe how the Culture manages to find him and how he handles the new mission he is assigned to. Pretty imaginatively – and very efficiently, it turns out. In the end, even too well. The alternate chapters examine Zakelwe’s past missions for the Culture. He has always been very effective, but not always the most easily controllable operative. Especially when the objective of the mission isn’t what it seems at a first glance. The Culture plays a very long game, and the immediate effect of their actions sometimes seems to be counterproductive given their stated goal, that is, easing military tensions and wars everywhere. He has endured some pretty devastating missions, but has always survived and is found and rescued at the last possible moment by the Culture and his “handler,” Diziet Sma, and an AI drone, Skaffen-Amtiskaw. At the end, the past meets the present.

The format of the story was a bit confusing at first, and I am still unsure when the prologues happen compared to the rest of the story, but the book was excellent nevertheless. Zakalwe has an intriguing personality and a very sharp tactical mind, and he is able to use almost anything as a weapon. By the end of the book it turns out that he is also ready to do literally anything to win against and control his opponent. The writing was good, as everything by Iain M. Banks usually is, and the Culture itself was fascinating to read about. 

411 pp.