The man known as Cheradenine Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances’ foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks or military action.The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him towards his present eminence, but despite all their dealings she did not know him as well as she thought.The drone known as Skaffen-Amtiskaw knew both of these people. It had once saved the woman’s life by massacring her attackers in a particularly bloody manner. It believed the man to be a burnt-out case. But not even its machine intelligence could see the horrors in his past.

Confusing and scattershot, this is one of the worst books I’ve read by Ian Banks, though it can be said that even his worst work is better than most author’s best. The problem for me was that it wasn’t apparent until the final 50 pages of the book that there were some Pulp Fiction like chronological shenanigans going on with the story. For most of the book I was trying to figure out what one scene had to do with the last and how they were all connected. I find this type of writing to be a shame because unlike a movie, I’m not likely going to go back through and re-read the book after the final revelation. I would do it for a movie, that’s only another 2 hours or so that I’d spend doing it, whereas it took me the better part of a month to get through this book.