Look to Windward is a novel of Banks' futuristic Culture, a massive transgalactic civilization populated by intelligences alien and artificial which nevertheless maintains an element of what could be loosely described as humanity. The novel manages to be extremely wide-ranging in scope while at the same time maintaining a focus on individual characters and skillfully connecting their seemingly unrelated experiences.

Although there is an amount of action very early in the book, it does take quite a while for the reader to find a comfortable seat on Banks' rather unusual ride. As the story ranges from the diverse worlds of martial three-armed Ewoks on steroids to ultra high-tech deathless worlds and the inhabitable innards of gigantic floating intelligent leviathans, one spends a good deal of time wondering where the author is taking us and if there is even a slight chance that there is a point to what sometimes feels like an exercise in extreme worldbuilding. By the mid-point of the novel, this bemused confusion evolves into respect, and ultimately something approaching awe when one realizes that not only are these widely divergent elements not extraneous, but are indeed crucial to a plot that is both far more complex and simpler than one might imagine. Anyone who reads this novel will no doubt mark the moment when they realize, "my goodness, he's actually going to pull this off!"

I will not go into detail regarding the story's particulars, as there is an element of surprise involved which would be a shame to risk losing and furthermore, a summary would do little justice to a work this convoluted and unusual, which somehow remains intriguingly conventional at heart.

Style: Banks is a technical craftsman, whose intentions are not readily apparent but gradually begin to take form over the course of the novel. His vocabulary is extensive without being flowery and he is never guilty of overwriting. His action sequences tend to be more descriptive than visceral and tend to come off a little more passively than is likely intended. His constructed names appear to be devoid of etymology, and while superior to the Asimov school of science fiction naming, do not flow as smoothly as one might like. There is a remoteness to his "voice" which very well suits the massive scale of the Culture universe.

Story: The whole is generally greater than the sum of the parts. Without giving anything away, I found the war between the relatively primitive society which had been resisting absorption and the Culture to be one of the less interesting aspects as well as a mediocre war story. The dissident composer's tale is integral and somewhat interesting, but gets quite slow in the middle, quite the opposite of the floating leviathans' story, which starts off in a manner simultaneously confusing and boring but becomes increasingly more fascinating until it, quite literally, explodes. But these bizarre elements, with all their strengths and weaknesses, combine fortuitously into a plot which comes together remarkably well. This is definitely a book which requires a little determination and stamina, but the effort is rewarded.

Characters: I found the characterizations to be the weakest part of the novel. When the speech and thoughts of an alien, a reconstructed intelligence, a singular machine intelligence and a massively parallel artificial superintelligence do not come off as being significantly different from one to the next, I think it is fair to say that some amount of improvement is conceivable. Only two characters "came to life" to any appreciable degree, in my opinion, and the relationships between the characters did not show many of the day-to-day vagaries of human interaction despite the fact that their behavior is, for the most part, otherwise indistinguishable from that of normal humanity.

Creativity: There are several aspects to this book which I consider to be quite inventive. Culture itself, of course, is an interesting take on the concept of transgalactic empire and the sheer scale is breathtaking. The synthetic heaven of the three-armed folk is an interesting religion substitute and I also found the notion of the massively parallel superintelligence to be intriguing even if I was not convinced by its characterization. I have read one other Banks book, Inversions, and I am impressed by his ability to work comfortably within both the science fiction and fantasy genres and his unusual willingness to meld them.

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