u/johnerik

Just finished reading Excession and wanted to post a few quick comments:

• This has to be the book with the most occurrences of the word “parapet” ever. 
• I appreciated the epilogue. >!In which it’s basically said that the Excession is a Contact ship from another even more powerful/intelligent universe. (There’s always something bigger than you.)!<
• I appreciate how such illustration, vocabulary, and syntax seem to just flow from Banks. While reading I was often simultaneously imagining deep space scenes/ships/orbitals/beaches and also Banks himself sitting at a keyboard spewing half-page+ sentences (sometimes with 3 words per page I needed to look up) from his fingers. 
• While there was a plot and initially disparate stories did become intertwined, the intervals between story overlaps can be so distant because of all the details/descriptions/inner-monologues/side-tangents. It was especially true for Excession that my most enjoyable reading experiences were when I read in multi-hour blocks, instead of 30 mins before bed. 
• I’m reminded that reading a Banks book is more a question of Do you want to hang out with the Culture for a while? than a question of do you want to experience twists and turns one after another. You have to just give in and let the world envelop you, without passing judgement on how it's elaborated.