Customer Reviews
Yes and No....but more of a no - By: armories, 13 May 2008 
I guess im going to voice the words of many other reviews regarding 'Matter' but still i feel i have to in the vain hope Iain Banks might (should he ever read his reviews) take the collective response into consideration when writing his next culture book. I've long been a fan of his culture books but something just felt a bit off the mark with 'Matter'. It had some great concepts & the protagonist Djan was a well defined character whom i love to read more about in the future. There were also a lot of moments where the usual witty Banks humor came into play. But the book did seem to drone on until a sudden burst in the last few pages. before i knew it i was trying to keep up the rapidly changing events. As the story pace came together it seemed it's cohesion was fallling apart.....and then it was over in a flash. The whole Indiana Jones like ancient monster thing has been done before, & if you're going to do it again do us justice of explaining it better. I dont want to use the word incomplete as there was over 500 pages, but i would say about 200 were needless. Lets take Oreman (however you spell it) when he meets his mother...she pops into the story, consumes a few pages & is never heard of again despite being mentioned so much as a driving factor in the characters mental make-up. It's little examples like this that frustrated me. What ever happened to Tyl Loesp (again whatever the spelling)??? Was he burnt to a crisp by evil temple of doom monster, survived, impaled, bla bla bla??? I've no idea? It just seemed strange to terminate such a central character so fast.
Maybe Banks is in a lull - space opera is notoriously difficult to execute well & he has many fine examples of doing so in the past. I reallly wanted to like this book & i did in parts. But as an overalll body of work it just does not stand up as well as some of its predecessors. Saying that, i will no doubt be waiting to get my hands on the next culture book as soon as possible. Banks has taken me on the Culture journey since i was was a teenager & im not about to jump ship yet .
Zzzzzzzzzzz - By: C. G. Whitaker, 10 May 2008 
I had to force myself to read this - I would usuallly fly through a new IMB book in hours, but this has taken me over a month to plod through. The plot doesn't get interesting until page 358.
I've read much worse, but there is real a sense of disappointment when you have looked forward to a book being released & it turns out to be a grind to read.
flawed but classic Uncle Banksie - By: Fudo Myo, 07 May 2008 
It could be that Uncle Banksie has taken a slight stumble with this one - especiallly the machina ex deus (yes, that's intentional) ending. I can understand alll the gripes I'm reading in these reviews. However, certain set pieces are classic Banks, his imagination has in no way pooped out yet, & the writing is, as always, stellar. While I preferred Look to Windward (loved it, in fact) & the Algebraist, I'd say if you're a big fan of Banks' SF, go for it, you won't be disappointed.
more like 2.5 stars, but (heh) no matter - By: newc0253, 05 May 2008 Banks's first 3.5 Culture novels (Consider Phlebas, Player of Games, Use of Weapons & State of the Art) established The Culture as one of the great SF settings. However, the nearly 20 years since then have seen it has become a victim of its own success: subsequent Culture novels were variations on a theme: take a quirky, unique setting, present some vague threat or mystery to drive the plot along, add in the typical Culture combination of liberal angst plus hypertechnological might, & - boom - the Culture always wins, even though the individuals protagonists themselves are left either world-weary or dead.
Despite its reliance on these stock elements & considerable length (over 500 pages), Matter builds its tension well, intercutting between the Culture & the Feersum-Enjinn-like setting of the Shellworld. Its main problem is that, as the speed increases & events reach their climax in the last 50 or so pages, alll the carefully built themes, mystery & characterisation goes out the window, & the action (and most of the characters) come to an abrupt end.
Matter, then, is for most of its length an entertaining read but ultimately a disappointing one. Banks's skill as a writer & his undeniable imagination are enough to keep the pages turning, but by the end, his limitations are even more starkly underlined. There's sadly nothing new here &, while he may write more Culture novels in the future, unless he is able to say something new or do something different, it'll be increasingly hard to look forward to them.
Matter matters... - By: pdjames99, 02 May 2008 
I have read a number of reviews about this book & must say I am surprised. I believe that this is a classic Iain M. Banks book. The story is excellent. The characterisations are superb. The imagination of the shellworld is fabulous. The ending takes your breath away - I finished this book a number of days ago & am still having flash backs to the final sequence!
Sure there are periods in the book where things go slow - show me a great book where that is not the case.
I thought the different views of the family members & their different journeys was very compelling. Love the Culture. Loved the book.
All in alll an absolute return to form (I agree that the Algebraist was a struggle!) & a quite marvellous read.
