Amazon.co.uk Review
It's not easy to disturb a mega-utopia as vast as the one Iain M. Banks has created in his popular Culture series, where life is devoted to fun and ultra-high-tech is
de rigueur. But more than two millennia ago the appearance--and disappearance--of a star older than the universe caused quite a stir. Now the mystery is back, and the key to solving it lies in the mind of the person who witnessed the first disturbance 2,500 years ago. But she's dead, and getting her to cooperate may not be altogether easy.
Review
The author's Culture, that galaxy-spinning hedonistic society dedicated to benevolent intervention in the affairs of lesser mortals and the hypocrisy that this sometimes makes necessary, comes up against a major threat in this novel. When a vast dimension-hopping object suddenly appears, faction upon faction of Culture, including a charming species of sadistic octopoids, pile after it, and double-crosses proliferate to a point where individual motivations gradually become more or less irrelevant. There is, as always in Banks, a moral - which is that it is good to be clever, but cleverer to be good. This is one of the most remarkably complicated space operas of recent years and one of the best. (Kirkus UK)