{"id":3060,"date":"2013-08-05T20:59:34","date_gmt":"2013-08-06T00:59:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/?p=3060"},"modified":"2013-08-05T20:59:34","modified_gmt":"2013-08-06T00:59:34","slug":"use-of-weapons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/use-of-weapons\/","title":{"rendered":"Use of Weapons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{4.5\/5} &#8220;Everywhere they found themselves, the galaxy bubbled with life and its basic foods kept on speaking back to it&#8230; Still, he suspected if the Culture had really wanted to, it could have found far more spectacularly different and exotic places for him to visit. Their excuse was that he was a limited creature, adapted to certain sorts of planets and societies and types of warfare. A martial niche, Sma had called it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Zakalwe is occasionally hired by the Culture, specifically the Special Circumstances department, to wage war and manipulate people in power in less advanced civilizations. He&#8217;s very good at what he does. He&#8217;s paid lots of money, he&#8217;s had a treatment that means he doesn&#8217;t age, and after every job the SC finds a certain woman so that he can pay her a visit.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Use of Weapons<\/strong> by Iain M. Banks was published in 1990. It&#8217;s the third novel in his <strong>Culture<\/strong> series, following <a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/the-player-of-games\/\"><strong>The Player of Games<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This one takes a bit longer to get into, as it jumps around a bit more &#8212; I suggest starting it when you have time to read several chapters. Once it gets going, you&#8217;ll be interested in Zakalwe&#8217;s adventures.<\/p>\n<p>Zakalwe is a great military commander, and he always tries to minimize the loss of life in any conflict. He&#8217;s also very philosophical. There&#8217;s a shocking revelation at the end.<\/p>\n<p>I will definitely read more books by Banks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{4.5\/5} &#8220;Everywhere they found themselves, the galaxy bubbled with life and its basic foods kept on speaking back to it&#8230; Still, he suspected if the Culture had really wanted to, it could have found far more spectacularly different and exotic places for him to visit. Their excuse was that he was a limited creature, adapted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,28,5,8],"class_list":["post-3060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-book","tag-novels","tag-review","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3060"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3098,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060\/revisions\/3098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmswitzer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}