Use of Weapons (Paperback)

by Iain M. Banks (Author)
Key Phrases: crew lounge, open cluster, knife missile, The Ethnarch, Livueta Zakalwe, Tsoldrin Beychae (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
'There is now no British SF writer to whose work I look forward with greater keenness' The Times --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description
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 and 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 lost cause. But not even its machine could see the horrors in his past.

Ferociously intelligent, both witty and horrific, USE OF WEAPONS is a masterpiece of science fiction.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Orbit; Reprint edition (July 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316030570
• ISBN-13: 978-0316030571
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (80 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #17,533 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

66 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spectacular and thought-provoking space opera, August 23, 2002

By	Richard R. Horton (Webster Groves, MO United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: USE OF WEAPONS (Bantam Spectra Book) (Mass Market Paperback)

Use of Weapons is set around the edges of Banks' utopian star-civilization the Culture, which is featured in a number of Banks' books. Cheradenine Zakalwe is not a Culture citizen, but he has been employed by the Special Circumstances branch of the Culture's Contact section as a mercenary, trying to influence conflicts on a variety of planets to be resolved in the direction the Culture prefers. As the main action of the story opens, Zakalwe has "retired" from SC. Diziet Sma, who has been Zakalwe's "control" in the past, is rudely summoned from her latest (quite pleasurable) assignment in order to find Zakalwe and recruit him for one more emergency mission (involving a situation with which Zakalwe was previously involved).

From this point, the novel progresses in two main directions. The main branch of the story follows Sma forward in time, as she pursues and eventually finds Zakalwe, and as Sma and Zakalwe accomplish, in general terms, the mission on which the SC branch has sent them. This involves convincing a retired politician who supports the "right" side (anti-terraforming, pro-Machine Intelligence) of a conflict in an unstable star cluster to return to the arena and forestall a coming war, and then also involves some intervention in a "brushfire" which has broken out as a precursor to the war. This story is exciting and enjoyable, with plenty of Banksian action, Banksian scenery, and Banksian humor, the last as usual particularly embodied in the character of Sma's drone assistant, Skaffen-Amtiskaw. (Banks' machine characters are inveterate scene-stealers.)

The second plot thread moves steadily backward in time (complicated by a couple of even-farther backward flashbacks), following Zakalwe's career as an agent for SC, back to his recruitment by SC and his war experiences prior to that, and finally back to his formative years as an aristocrat of sorts on a planet with roughly 19th-20th century Earth technology and social structure. This thread allows us to slowly learn more of Zakalwe's character, and of the traumatic events which have made him the rather tortured individual he is at the time of the main action. Thus, the novel's structure is at first blush mildly experimental. However, this structure is really logical, and essential to the reader's experience. Essentially, the main action is illuminated by our growing understanding of Zakalwe's past. And the use of Sma as a viewpoint character (despite her somewhat non-centrality to most of the action sequences) is a vital strategy: in a sense, she becomes a stand-in for the reader: and part of our understanding of the novel is trying to understand Sma's feelings for Zakalwe (which are not romantic at all, by the way), and to measure her Use of the Weapon that is Cheradenine Zakalwe in the context of Zakalwe's humanness, and in a sort of parallel or contrast to Zakalwe's expert use of a variety of weapons.

The climax of the novel is a shocker. However, it's not just a "surprise ending for the sake of the surprise". It's crucial to our understanding of the book: and it gives the book meaning far beyond the (very good) adventure story it has been up to that point. The climax seemed to reverberate back through the entire book, giving new meaning to almost every incident. This is a book which almost demands immediate rereading. I think it is still Banks' best book, and one of the essential SF novels of the past quarter-century.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply the best, January 4, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: USE OF WEAPONS (Bantam Spectra Book) (Mass Market Paperback)

I have been reading SF for more than 30 years, yet this book was without doubt the most compelling, ingenious, best crafted and best characterised that I can remember ever reading (and I have read all the 'greats'). Work out Cheradinine's motivation (half way through the book I had to stop and cry 'Why does he keep putting himself through all this?') if you can - it's a real stunner when revealed. Oh so clever, so interesting, so shocking - if I never did anything else in my life but write a book even half this good, I would die happy. To confirm what another reviewer said, if you haven't read science fiction before, don't start with this - Player of Games will be more understandable and will give you a frame of reference for Use of Weapons. Interestingly, although the book deals, at first sight anyway, with the business of war and of being a mercenary, of all the people I have recommended this to, women seem to get more out of it and are more enthusiastic then men - who have just enjoyed it rather than raved about it. If you like books that make you think, that need sustained concentration, that need you to be able to remember things from one chapter to the next, yet which are still an enjoyable read - read this, or any other Iain Banks book - you won't be disappointed.

33 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of his best, March 22, 2003

By	Michael Battaglia - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: USE OF WEAPONS (Bantam Spectra Book) (Mass Market Paperback)

The majority of the Culture novels are uniformly excellent, with the only problem in some of them that the final twist is so odd that the book loses some of its impact, or the plot becomes so knotted that the book loses some of its coherance. Not so in this case. This novel tends to deal only peripherally with the Culture, but at the same time their presence infuses and infests the entire novel. Mostly it's the story of a non-Culture fellow who works for them in Special Circumstances (what a great euphemism) doing all the stuff they'd rather not admit to, starting wars, ending wars, waging wars, stuff that he's unfortunately good at. What makes this novel so brilliant is the tight and inventive structure, alternating between the main story itself and scenes from the character's past. All of it is wonderfully written and together they give not only an excellent view of the character in all his possibly dysfunctional glory, but also the rest of the characters (even the most minor character feels three dimensional), as well as a good cross-section of Banks' universe, both of the Culture and the civilizations that aren't part of the Culture. The final twist will change everything and sharp eyed readers will probably figure it out long before the end, although Banks is so good at misdirection and distraction that it barely occurred to me even as it came crashing down on the characters. Definitely his most consistently brilliant work, for once both structure and plot combine to create something that ranks as both first class SF and first class reading, period. If you've got a friend who's been hesitating on discovering Banks' works, give them this one and if that doesn't convince them, well then perhaps nothing will.