Excession by Iain M. Banks
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The fourth story (or fifth depending on how you count a short story in the continuity) in Banks's Culture series. This, as usual, is smartly written and nicely plotted with some interesting twists and turns. However, unlike some of the previous works, it's much less open-ended. Almost all the big questions are answered in full by the end, with very little ambiguity, which is unfortunate because I found the indefiniteness of the earlier installments to be one of their strengths.
It also doesn't help that this book is very AI-focused, which tends to make the issues a little abstruse, and the human characters are decidedly under developed. Even the token alien race introduced for this one (while humorous) seemed a little thin.
Nonetheless the book is entertaining space opera, and I'd recommend it for Sci Fi fans looking for competent material, even if it's not quite up to the standards of the previous books.