633 pages
Langue : French
Publié 13 novembre 2003 par Le Livre de poche.
Horza, l'un des derniers métamorphes, peut modifier sa forme à sa guise, ce qui en fait une redoutable machine de guerre.
Il s'est engagé, aux côtés des Idirans, dans une croisade personnelle contre la Culture, cette immense société galactique anarchiste, tolérante, éthique et cynique.
Mais son combat n'est qu'une escarmouche insignifiante dans la grande guerre qui embrase la Galaxie, entre la Culture et les Idirans fanatiques.
Une guerre anachronique : une guerre de religion.
Après L'Homme des jeux et L'Usage des armes, voici le troisième volume de la série de la Culture, la plus grande épopée galactique depuis Fondation, Dune et Hypérion.
This is the second Banks I’ve read and I thought they were both terrific. Unlike some epic, galaxy-spanning space operas, this was pacey, smoothly written with great characters and loads of action and adventure.
I definitely enjoyed this more than (Surface Detail)[https://book.dansmonorage.blue/book/18939]. If nothing else, it is notably shorter, which suggests an instance of "established authors need editing too".
Banks does love to shock, and loves to write "cinematically", which occasionally a bit tiresome.
While I think describing the Culture series as "Literary Science Fiction" is a bit of stretch, there are some interesting big picture ideas, and some of the characters have some depth, or at least some interior life. The choice of having a "bad guy" protagonist already elevates it beyond a lot of more pulpy SF.
I don't know why I was under the impression that this was a super important part of the sci fi cannon. It had some interesting imagery in it, but it was pretty silly action movie sequences for the large part. I am curious how the culture grows in the other books though, there were enough of these written that some in them must have stuck.
