92. Use of Weapons, by Iain M. Banks. (A Culture Novel)

Use of Weapons is approximately the fourth book about the Culture that Iain M Banks has written, and it follows much in the same vein as the rest. The Culture, while seeming to be this fantastic paradise of good moral standing, seems to love to meddle with other worlds and other universes, and every so often they have to pull operatives in to help divert or clear up events that may turn into quite nasty little wars. They don't necessarily pick the best tools, however.

I was a bit ambivalent about this one, although I've really liked most of the other Culture stories I've read. The narrative was quite confusing (the story jumps around in time quite a lot, with either flashbacks or previous events explained at quiet points in the current story) and it was sometimes difficult to tell immediately when in the protagonist's life you were reading about. Aside from that, the action was quite fast-paced, but there was not a lot of background given on a lot of the places mentioned. Perhaps this was done intentionally to show how often conflicts cause the same basic problems regardless of location. Mostly the only thing that irritated me was the confusion between past and present.