Look to Windward cover art

Look to Windward

Culture Series, Book 7

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Look to Windward

By: Iain M. Banks
Narrated by: Peter Kenny
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About this listen

The novels of Iain M. Banks have forever changed the face of modern science fiction. His Culture books combine breathtaking imagination with exceptional storytelling, and have secured his reputation as one of the most extraordinary and influential writers in the genre.

It was one of the less glorious incidents of a long-ago war.

It led to atrocities on an extraordinary scale. To the destruction of two suns and the billions of lives they supported.

Now, eight hundred years later, the light from the first of those doomed stars has reached the Culture Orbital, Masaq', bathing its ­fifty billion inhabitants in the rays of their society's ancient mistake.

Amongst them is Major Quilan, sent on a mission so secret that not even he knows what it is, and determined to exact his revenge against the Culture at any cost.

The Culture series:
Consider Phlebas
The Player of Games
Use of Weapons
Excession
Inversions
Look to Windward
Matter
Surface Detail
The Hydrogen Sonata
The State of the Art

Other books by Iain M. Banks:
Against a Dark Background
Feersum Endjinn
The Algebraist

©2000 Iain M. Banks (P)2013 Hachette Digital Science Fiction Fiction Thought-Provoking Banking

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Critic reviews

'Banks keeps ratcheting up the suspense' Guardian

'Banks is a phenomenon' William Gibson

'A mordant wit, a certain savagery and a wild imagination' Mail On Sunday
All stars
Most relevant
One of finest and most currently apposite in the post 9/11, fundamentalist enriched world. His death was a great loss.

One of finest and most currently apposite.

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brilliant story and great delivery by Peter Kenny as usual. just love the culture. just purchased the next book

great book

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A universe so alien and controlled by intelligences so far beyond our own it’s like you next to bacteria
Iain M Banks brings to life a utopian dystopia with secrets and war
Love and betrayal
A rip roaring gritty bloody book

Iain m banks does not fit into nice predictable storylines

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I first read this shortly after it was first published and it was my first Banks novel. I fell in love with the Culture novels because of it, I find Banks had a magnificent ability to describe scale and give the impression of the true size of the universe. This is a loose sequel to Consider Phlebas, which I enjoyed more upon reading it afterwards, perhaps because the main character is so interesting. I do enjoy Banks' musical references and his use of culture to enhance the Culture, but the ending of Look to Windward is just perhaps a little too neat - with a small and predictable plot twist. It's better than some culture novels such as the Hydrogen Sonata but isn't up to the standards set by the Player of Games and falls well short of Banks' other sci-fi worlds - Against a Dark Background and the Algebraist for example. Peter Kenny's readings of Banks' work are always brilliant, although I do snigger when he flips to Australian or South African accents because he's run out of suitable character voices.

Deep, dark, memorable and massive.

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The height of Banks' powers, credible and sympathetic characters. Themes of consciousness, identity, self responsibility, personal integrity, accountability. All with great 'humanity' and humour. The humanity is somewhat imposed on alien minds but for the sake of readability and accessibility some framework is required for story. Recognisable alien humanity is offset by the absence or inscruitability of the Bohemothaurs - plus the (disposable) relationship between a Bohemothaur and its symbionts; symbionts with their simple but boosted intellects present an inversion of the 'culture mind' vs. human relationship, or at least one hopes it does.

One of his most accomplished works

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