Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks || Book review

Hi guys, in this video I’m reviewing Iain M Banks' Use of Weapons.
Thanks for watching.
Like the Culture? Check out my Culture playlist here:
• What is Iain M Banks’ ...
#theculture #iainmbanks #sciencefiction
Review criteria
***** - Blew my mind. Simple as.
**** - Great story, well written, entertained me all the way.
*** - Good story, well written, mostly entertaining.
** - Has good bones but failed in a number of ways.
* - Failed in every way a book can.
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MY STUFF
linktr.ee/book...
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vvv MORE vvv
MY SCI-FI NOVELS
www.amazon.co....
DELPHINE DESCENDS
After her family is killed and her homeworld occupied, young Kathreen Martin is sent to the distant world of Furoris for re-education. She will live the rest of her life as a serf - to be bought and sold as a commodity of the Imperial Network.
When her only chance of escape is ruined, a chance mistaken identity offers her a new life as the orphaned daughter of a First-Citizen Senator and heiress to a vast fortune.
She vows to claw her way into power to sit among the worlds’ elite. Then, with her own hands, she will reap bloody vengeance on them all.
But to beat them, she must play their game. And she must play it better than them all.
BLACK MILK
Prometheus has the chance to bring his wife back from the dead, but doing so will mean the destruction of Earth.
Spanning time, planets and dimensions, Black Milk draws to a climactic point in a post-apocalyptic future, where humanity, stranded with no planet to call home, fights to survive against a post-human digital entity that pursues them through the depths of space.
Five lives separated by aeons are inextricably linked by Prometheus’s actions:
Ystil.3 is an AI unit sent back in time from the distant future to investigate Prometheus’s discovery...
The mysterious Lydia has devoted her life to finding a planet that the last remaining humans can call home…
Tom Jones (he’s a HUGE fan!) is an AI trapped inside a digital subspace, lost and desperate to find his way back to his beloved in real-time…
Dr Norma Stanwyck is a neuroscientist from 24th Century Earth whose personal choices ripple throughout time...
Prometheus must learn the necessity of death or the entire universe will be swallowed by his grief.
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GOODREADS
You can stalk me on Goodreads to see what I'm currently reading. bit.ly/3rrcByD
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IMAGE USE
The images in my videos are mostly licensed stock photos. However, occasionally I will use images found online. I always seek to properly credit artists and offer a link back to their amazing work but sometimes it's hard to find the original source of the work. If I've used an image you own and I haven't credited you, please feel free to get in touch as I am always more than happy to do so.

[@WhatAboutZoidberg]

The book was a tough read, but about 60-70% story elements started clicking into place in my head and I started getting REALLY excited. Every piece started to fall into place and the novel really blossomed. Such a fantastic book. The ending made me wide eyed and hit me with a gut punch. I kept rolling over the ideas and how Banks was telling us the entire time who this was. I will definitely read this again and will probably find more and more hints dropped the entire time.

[@euchiron]

This was the most intriguing of all the Culture novels to me. Such a magnificent and dark story

[@bazoo513]

Well, he got an absolution from Livueta, and at least _that_ war is history, with Strabinde just a monument. And, on average, Sma and her fellow SC folks did put this broken weapon to good use, and in service of good.

[@drcarnage83]

I like the bit where Sma boards a ship of Culture layabouts who've given each other colds because they're board.

[@jamestuckerman3727]

That ending.... The first time I read this I spent ten minutes staring at the wall in shock, then rushed off to give the book to a friend and made her read it. I had to habe someone to talk to about it!

[@pablod.rodriguez1423]

3:12 "More levels of georgeous ambiguity" Loved it! Read the book in Spanish years ago and still remember the feelings and emotions it brings to me, great ending have to say. Will read again soon. Thanks for sharing.

[@tomitiustritus6672]

*SPOILER* The scar part did confuse me too, until i realized Banks pulled a trick on us with the narrative structure. The flashback where he gets the scar is inside a chapter from Elethiomels pov, where he lies wounded in the volcano. You just automatically assume it's Cheradenine, because you assume Elethiomel is Cheradenine at that point. But the chapter in which the memory is placed makes it clear in hindsight, that Elethiomel is the one who has the bone fragment in him.

[@UCwlamXmPue-X67f6AYlgL3Q]

The only fatal flaw of Darrel's videos: there is not enough of them.

[@8020Alive]

+1 - but they are quality and it takes time to script and edit his thoughts. But if he needs ideas..... David Zindell - A Requiem for Homo Sapiens Series AI Trilogy by Tony Ballantyne Derek Künsken Roger MacBride Allen Christopher Hinz Edward Willett or Timothy Zahns Conquerors Saga or Quadrail series. A video from him with obscure authors not mentioned in other youtube videos would be interesting. I am sure he has some FAVs we don't know about.

[@alexchapman6930]

I read it, that the bone fragment happened to Elethiomel, but he later covered up his identity, to become Zakalwe to leave the planet after the ship and the chair. So many nuances, such a good book. Leans more to the banks contempary fiction than later books. 🙂

[@markwise3777]

Thank you. I always like when a reviewer warns of spoilers; usually, I carry on, thinking, it's okay, I'll bear in mind etc. This time, some instinct made me skip the spoilers, and I'm so glad I did. I knew I was going to read Use of Weapons and I'd already picked up on this book being one of the best. It really is. When I reached the end, I knew I'd read one of science fiction's great novels. Not just in SF terms, but any way you consider literature. Now I've gone back to view your spoiler section, and I find I had many of the same thoughts as you did. I'd add, that I felt among the book's strong themes, the one that stood out for me was how we can never really escape what happens to us in childhood. No matter how life turns out for us, we will always feel the echoes of the joys and torments of our earliest experiences. I am going through the books very slowly and am relishing the prospect of the rest of them. But I know that if and when I reread any of them, I will first reach for Use of Weapons. It's magnificent.

[@johnhickton2922]

My favourite Culture novel so far (only one left to read, starting tomorrow). I agree with your summary. The ending was a real stunner but on reflection made perfect sense. The main character is seeking atonement for his appalling acts. He won the final battle but was overcome with guilt so punished himself repeatedly, knowing that the Culture could bring him back to do keep doing it over and over again. Once the penny dropped on the chapters timelines it made the book even more intriguing. Definite 5 stars.

[@hisjoeness]

**SPOILER** This continues in the epilogue of Surface Detail, where we see Zakalwe betrayed the Culture in that he was a double agent for the pro- hells side. This series was super fun to read and didn't require a lot of pondering, but I actually had to think hard about why he would do that. Then I thought of this- atonement. He was pro-hell because of this.

[@tulliusexmisc2191]

I was surprised by the ending, but I did not find it shocking, rather, it came as a relief. The story appeared to have ended without a resolution, but suddenly there it was - not for the protagonist, but for the reader. The best comparison I can think of is the conclusion of Ibsen's Doll's House.

[@sbits_yo615]

I am new to sci-Fi and just last night i finished "Use of Weapons". Its just mindblowing how a character you feel and root for can be the same character you despise and wish the cruelest of fates upon him. There is just 1 question that's been boggling my mind. How do we, as readers, get to experience the memories of Cheradenine when he is the Commander of his home planet army, the summerhouse destruction, the dialogue he has with Livueta about doing something in order to rescue Darkense and the horror (and later suicide attemt) when realising what had happened to his sister?

[@rustyk4645]

I think that Eluthemiel went over the events HUNDREDS of times, trying to see things from Cheradenine's perspective. At first, this was to give himself a convincing Backstory. As time went on, it became necessary to tell it to himself, to relieve himself of his Guilt-fuelled Nightmares. EVENTUALLY, he had told himself the story SO many times he came to Believe it. So basically ALL of those 'Memories' were Fictions, invented by Eluthemiel, to convince himself he is Zakalwe. He is not Remembering anything. We see this a lot in other Iain Banks novels: characters adopting someone else's identity so completely, they start forgetting their own.

[@warrenford]

Yeah you got it.... Well you got what i got lol... My favourite banks novel alongside the bridge and the twist... I always think banks has a wee chuckle at the readers expense and love that

[@Cmdtheartist]

I read the first 2 Culture books, then this one, and I couldn't get the audio version of the next one, so Use of Wespons lingered in my thoughts and haunted me, and I know WHEN I reread it, it will be an entirely different story. This is the book I would recommend to someone who is serious about getting into science fiction. For a casual dabbler, Childhood's End. Still powerful, but easier to absorb.

[@bgallagher9718]

Yep - I had the same interpretation as you. You could go a touch further (though it's a bit more of a stretch) and say that he then used the switched personality as a weapon, too, in order to continue to function in his life as a Culture agent. For me UoW is Banks' cleverest Culture book, but not the most enjoyable. That honour goes to Excession. Looking forward to a review of that one.

[@Sci-FiOdyssey]

🤯

[@simondeveg]

Brilliant review ,ive read all Bank's stuff from The Wasp Factory onwards , a sad ,sad loss ..

[@JubyCanada]

Smh, it's written as a Greek tragedy, the 'twist' is revealed early and you are supposed to be engrossed with watching the tragedy unfold. Like Oedipus Rex, even in ancient Greece the audience knew of Oedipus Rex, they saw the play to sit in awe as the craziness went down. So many sci Fi reviewers seem to miss this. Think of a scanner darkly, pkd blatantly tells you truth in first pages and then puts on such a show you try and convince yourself to believe something else even though deep down you know cause he told you. It's a testament to his talent that it keeps you reading and awed by a forgone conclusion. I would highly recommend you reread it, knowing the plot in advance will allow you to appreciate it as a classic tragedy. Everyone picks up on hyperions shtick but no one talks about this...

[@phillipjenkins3272]

If you've never read any of the culture novels, this is not the best starting place. It is however my fav in the series

[@BonChanSama]

Glad I stumbled upon your channel!

[@jeffreyatlee8785]

I just realised that plasma weapons could use geothermal energy as a crude work around.

[@isaaclindemuth6037]

Spoiler! My thoughts on the bone fragment/scar. I don't think Elethiomel ever had a bone fragment in his chest. He convinced himself that he did and that it was lost when he was decapitated

[@kensummers7757]

Enid Blyton preceded this with Four Make Some Furniture

[@kierangalea6562]

Outstanding review, I can really relate to your enjoyment of not having everything explained to you.

[@Tabletop_Nonsenseverse]

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! This book weighs heavy on my mind and conscience. I love it. About the ending - I am generally a fan of ambiguous endings, but this one was an unfair rug pull moment for me. Ok the "twist" is great. However, a little too much is left unanswered. Basically, one more point if touched upon would have made the book perfect (in my opinion). Nothing that the protagonist does in the whole book foreshadows and allows the leader to understand what went through their head post chair making and pre-Diziet Sma. Frankly, I don't buy the "haunted by his past misdeeds". The actions of the protagonist is that of someone who IS haunted by the horrors (DONE TO HIM) of his past, but not of someone WHO DID THE HORRORS. That is a serious disconnect - the actions of a victim, but past of a tormentor.

[@rustyk4645]

But in a way, a Perpetrator of a Crime is also a Victim of that Crime, as if you have a sense of morality, Guilt will be potentially even more Traumatic than a sense of Grievance and Injustice. Some men would have killed themselves from the Guilt, but his mind found an illusion that allowed him to Live.

[@libertyauto]

"gorgeous ambiguity"

[@muttineni03]

Have you reviewed Consider Phlebas?

[@user-yj1dm7vp8e]

Thank you

[@paulymorphous9958]

Nice to see this land within a week of me finishing Use of Weapons for the first time. What more can be said? The bigger reveal, for me, was the story around the chair. I'm sure this would be a good candidate for a re-read, but there's so so many more good stories to read and I've barely scratched the surface of the classics.

[@davidmoore5925]

The chair, the twist. It may be my favourite culture novel, I'll decide when I have finished re-reading them all (again).

[@libertyauto]

Thanks for this review. I have been trying to figure out which Culture novel to re-read next, and this review helped me decide. Apparently its been long enough for me to forget enough to re-read, because when you started to mention a twist at the end, I didnt remember a big twist. So I jumped past the spoiler section so I can be surprised by whatever twist you started to mention.

[@brucewailes7744]

"Did I get it?" Yes, exactly. That's why it's called use of weapons. I think you have it perfectly.

[@jonb6384]

I was frustrated by the amount of jumping around from chapter to chapter. I’ll be getting into a narrative then boom I’m trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Elethiomel was not a major enough character for the ending to have a really strong impact. Like I think he was present for like 5 chapters. Yawn. I’ll continue reading the Culture series but this was my least favorite.

[@bazoo513]

8:18 - Yes, you got it right. But i thought it was pretty clear from the novel. You are also right in giving it five stars rating. Speaking of my favs by Banks, have you read "The Bridge" and "Walking on Glass", two "non-M" Banks novels, but a slight bit leaning on SF&F side? The former is my (and, apparently, the author's) favorite. Do you have, or will have, a video on any of them? Thanks for very well thought through, if short, analysis.

[@kparker2430]

i'm going to comment before i watch the vid; this book was a bastard to read; as far as i can tell, there were two separate stories; one started at the front of the book, and one from the back. The chapters would have made sense had one just realized; one did not; two different stories, from two ends of the book, that culminate in the middle; who does that?! The second reading must be done accordingly. The way i read it, the good guy I was barracking for turned out to be dead, and the bad guy took his place, such that I was barracking for him for half the book by mistake. It did my head in; now i wonder what the video says.

[@Matt-nx6uu]

Cheers, Banks will forever be my introduction to philosophy and introspection.

[@fuffoon]

It was a weird one.

[@Commandelicious]

SPOILERS that f*cking chair gave me nightmares

[@kparker2430]

i suggested the same deal for Putins daughter and youtube kicked me for 24 hours. The Chair, the godam chair!

[@CaptainPilipinas]

Typical Paranoid|Hypocritical youtube(/google/facebook/Etc), yes.

[@babiskissanis2367]

How is this man so hot!!!