Do not go into this expecting a buddy cop thriller where one Culture Special Circumstances agent and one non-Culture agent must save a 'primitive' world from self-destruction whilst arguing the morality of doing so. Do let me know if you know of any books like that though.

Ever since Banks died, I've been rationing the Culture series but Use of Weapons was an exercise in frustration. Two of the big choices that frustrated me - the SC agent being immature and ineffectual, and the narrative structure being a whirlwind tour of Culture meddling rather than focusing on a single case - I understand are in service of showing how the Culture doesn't understand these 'primitive' worlds and people like it believes it does, and to give a wide sample of how its meddling can turn out. That doesn't change the fact that Sma was a disappoint and the rapid-fire cases didn't give the native characters enough breathing space to make us really see them as humans being manipulated and demeaned.

The other thing that frustrated me, I don't believe was intentional: I hated Zakalwe. He should be fascinating - a pawn of the Culture, yet also carrying out their will, whether its a rescue or a war crime - but his personality is everything most boring about the chauvinistic action hero of the 80s. The whisky, the (sometimes borderline too young) women, the guns - maybe it would play better with a charismatic actor on screen but here it is eye-rolling at best and insulting at worst. Neither romance nor tragedy could make up for his constant whinging about a mysterious 'chair' in his past. The reveal about the chair was pretty affecting too, but by that time I was so pissed off hearing about it, it didn't garner the sympathy it should have. Similarly, the impact of the ending was somewhat kneecapped because

I couldn't hate 'Zakalwe' any more for being Elethomel than for having to follow his arrogant ass through 300 pages already.

Every time we got a thrilling tale of a near-death experience, I wished his enemies had had a little more luck.

I must give unto Banks what is Banks' however, the chapter we spend walking through a Culture GSV with Zakalwe was a brilliant rest stop on the hell tour of this book. Not only was it finally a slice of life for your average, non-SC Culture citizen, but Zakalwe's mixed feelings on body modifications, idleness, mood drugs, and many other Culture mainstays made for good pondering whilst he wandered. Beyond this chapter, too, the Culture's morality is challenged, from the specifics of each case Zakalwe takes (sometimes he is tasked to help idiots or degenerates, set up to fail, or extracted when they need him most), to the careless way Sma deploys him (once returning a desperate call from him whilst 'entertaining'), to the way the oh-so-enlightened Culture is happy to use someone as phenomenally unwell as Zakalwe (that alone succeeded in drawing sympathy from me) to do their dirty work. Even Skaffen-Amtiskaw, Sma's drone partner displays an attitude toward violence so at-odds with Culture values that its continued service in SC raises serious questions. Good food for thought.

Finally, I must give credit to:

I know this sounds like a lot of praise, so just look at my rating again and understand exactly how much Zakalwe dragged it down. Still worth a read for anyone who's read a couple Culture books or spent a lot of time thinking about the Prime Directive though.