Storyline: 3/5 
 Characters: 3/5 
 Writing Style: 3/5 
 World: 4/5 
 Iain M. Banks.... You did it again. The Culture is my favorite sci fi series to date. There's not even a close second-place contender. 
 Matter is a representative Culture book. That means a far future science fiction universe with species of varying forms and abilities. A universe where historical events billions of years ago are referenced in the same way we now discuss the events of classical Greek history. A time of overlapping technological trajectories and developmental stages, the most advanced of which are unfathomable and the most basic downright feudal. What Banks does better than anyone else in the genre is to take a distant and awe-inspiring future so far advanced and complicated as to be inscrutable and give the reader a mildly cushioned ride through a buffeting tour. You'll be sore and bruised at the end, but the wonders experienced are something to forever look back on with accomplishment and satisfaction. 
 This Culture volume also continues with Banks's statement on civilization. Banks clearly reproves humanity's propensity to destruction and maliciousness. The author's portrayal of the Culture as a utopian society that has moved beyond the fracas is counterbalanced with vivid encounters of wide-scale carnage. Yet the Culture - and Banks - doesn't allow utopia to ignore the suffering of others. Banks doesn't permit some easy way out of the conundrum. He seeks out those situations where only violence can answer violence. This leads to what I appreciate most about the author. This book and the others are written with an implicit - if not explicit - abhorrence of our destructive impulses, yet Banks glories in fury. In Matter, we get more exalted scenes of machismo, action-packed, adrenaline-inducing, magnificent onslaught which excite bloodlust and satisfy that same primal urge which Banks so evidently scorns. He doesn't try to reconcile the contradiction, and I very much appreciate that he felt comfortable admitting that he - and by extension humanity - might just have to live with the incongruity. 
 Matter also continues with another Banks proclivity: flawed storytelling. There is so much to like and to commend in these books, but Banks consistently frustrates me with the way he puts the stories together. This book has the best climax of any of the eight then-published volumes in the series. Of the 593 pages though, it really is not until somewhere around page 400 that a plot is evident. Until that point, the book had been split into two-halves. One half was that far future worldbuilding of which Banks so excels. He does not disappoint with new creations and revelations for the wider universe in Matter. The second half of those early 400 pages was not only boring and uninspired, it was far too similar to material he'd written in an earlier Culture volume (view spoiler)[Inversions (hide spoiler)]. For the first hundred pages, if not more, I was concerned that Banks was going to fail me; that he wasn't going to deliver on the grandeur that I've come to expect from his pen. I would have understood if someone had given up and decided that this was either a) repetitive or b) uninteresting. I'm glad I endured. As a fan, sometimes its hard to acknowledge criticisms of one's favorite, but Banks regularly frustrates in this respect. 
 It is with great anticipation that I pick up the next Culture book these days. It is also with some sadness that I put a newly-read one down. This was the 8th of 10, and Banks's premature death means that there will be no more. Every one I complete now means that there is one less for me to look forward to. 
 My ranking of my favorite Culture novels thus far, best to worst. 
 Player of Games 
 Excession 
 Look to Windward 
 Matter 
 Use of Weapons 
 Inversions 
 State of the Art 
 Consider Phlebas