A review by mschlat
Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks
3.0
Maybe more like 2.5 stars.... The big positive of this novel is that much of it takes place in the Culture (on an Orbital) instead of the surrounding galactic societies (as is usually the case), so you get many many glimpses of what life is like for a typical Culture citizen.
The negatives are two-fold. One, much of the story focuses on non-human protagonists from non-Culture worlds, and while the non-Culture aspect is very clear (they comment regularly on spoiled Culture folk), the non-human is not. You could make these characters human with very little alteration. Two, much more of the ending than I expected comes out of the blue. I was hoping for a "here's how the threads come together" experience and got something much more disconnected.
The negatives are two-fold. One, much of the story focuses on non-human protagonists from non-Culture worlds, and while the non-Culture aspect is very clear (they comment regularly on spoiled Culture folk), the non-human is not. You could make these characters human with very little alteration. Two, much more of the ending than I expected comes out of the blue. I was hoping for a "here's how the threads come together" experience and got something much more disconnected.