Introduction

• Book one of the Culture series, written in 1987.
• The Culture series are a science fiction series that revolve around a ‘perfect/utopian’ socialist society made up of human-like aliens and highly intelligent A.I. living all over the Milky Way/galaxy.
• They came into formation 9,000 years before the events of the novel take place.

Central themes

• Fast-paced space opera
• A.I.
• Extraterrestrial beings
• War

What it’s about

• The book builds on a dense world with many different interstellar societies, but mainly of two empires:
  • The Culture
  • The Idiran Empire
• We are immediately put in a position to understand from the very first few pages that the two are at war, with the main protagonist, ‘Horza’, introduced as the anti-hero in this story.
• Horza is a mercenary, and also a shape shifter (can take on any form), who in the beginning of the story is shown to be tortured and pending execution, with the presence of a certain culture agent called ‘Balveda’
• The action starts right away with an ambush to rescue Horza, and the book takes flight from here to fulfill a certain purpose.
• We are met with an interesting collection of characters, including a band of pirates and many other life forms that add so much richness to the world Iain created.

How it made me feel

• First of all, I was entertained from beginning to middle- where I got a little lost- and then to end.
• The writing was so superb, the world building was fantastic, the description of everything made me feel as if I was there watching and visualizing all the events that took place.
• I felt as though the book was a beam of light that penetrated my heart, filling it mostly with ecstatic joy.
• I loved that it was a journey, and not a slow one. It was the perfect vehicle to carry me on the ride that reminded me why I wanted to forget reality in the first place.