Use of Weapons

I'm reading through the Iain M. Banks in "the order they are on the shelf" which I have a suspicion might be random. Most (all?) of the half a dozen or so that we own are standalone I believe, so this should work out OK. I'm pretty sure I've read all of them before but sufficiently long ago that I can't remember what happens.

Use of Weapons is set in Banks's Culture universe - a far future human & AI interstellar, well, culture who are very much post-scarcity. They are one of the more technologically advanced civilisations in their era & part of the universe, and they benevolently interfere in the affairs of other civilisations to make sure things go the way they feel they should. To do this they often hire members of other civilisations to do the dirty work, and Zakalwe was one of these operatives. He's retired, mostly, but Special Circumstances (the interfering branch of the Culture) think he's the only man for this particular job and Diziet Sma (a human Culture citizen) and Skaffen-Amtiskaw (a drone, an AI Culture citizen) are dispatched to persuade him to join them.

Click the link below to read my full review.