I’m about two books in and am thoroughly enjoying the stories. It’s a bit slower paced than, say, William Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy, but the pacing isn’t really an issue. Most of the books are written from the viewpoint of Culture-based characters, thus, concepts that are normal for us (like rank and hierarchy) are completely foreign to them. I really like this aspect of the books. It’s social commentary of our value system done from the perspective of a completely detached 3rd party.

On top of the social commentary, Banks does a really good job on the actual writing of the book. There are some plot twists and some of them appear very obvious. The great thing about Banks is that he creates such a flexible enough universe so that the plot twists can easily go in any number of directions. He creates a very complex story in a very complex universe, but he writes in a very straightforward manner.The reader is very rarely left confused.

I just started the third book in the series. So far, so good.