The bomb only lives as it is falling and some books are not read until they're reread, still falling. The first time you reach the last page is merely the book's apogee. This book has been falling for a long time, the conclusion still resonating, the deft trickery of the contra-flow structure a dazzling achievement, the twist devastating and satisfying. But to return to the beginning (for me, the first time since its paperback publication) knowing how it ends can seem intuitively futile, as if the point of the book is the twist at the end. But the sign of a true masterpiece is if the twist is merely the mid-point and the second half of the book is to read the book once more with the mystery of 'what happened' and 'who' solved but the greater mystery of 'why' further beyond understanding. Dorothy Dunnett did this with an entire series of seven books. Though the final volume of The House Of Niccolo appeared a decade after Use of Weapons, I had come to retroactively assume that her twist must have influenced Banks. Impossible, obviously, but they were contemporary Scottish authors of some renown, and all her individual books had their own twists and coups and rug-pulls, more than enough to serve as an example to an ambitious young clever-clogs with literary talent to burn and a love for genre.

To read the story of a warrior recruited by the Culture to fight dirty wars in the name of Doing Good knowing the warrior's darkest secret and greatest torment is to know him as a monster and a madman. What seemed clever becomes reckless. What seemed like ruthlessness forced by necessity becomes instinct unleashed. What seemed like a psyche tormented by horror becomes a selfish desire for forgiveness that is as impossible as it is undeserved. What seems like a quest for atonement by serving a higher cause becomes an indulgence of a rotten talent under a thin pretext of redemption. When Sma and Amtiskaw find Zakalwe he is busily driving a planet to war, through an effort at mimicking the Culture's tactics of trickery and manipulation, making a complete hash of it and yet seemingly oblivious. Throughout the book he never seems to fully grasp the mechanism or the goals involved in creating a better outcome. In the abstract, knowing he is part of such a process salves his bloody conscience, but as an object it is completely outside his conception. On first read he is a victim, shaped by war into a supreme warrior and doomed to keep doing the only thing he's good at across the galaxy while hoping that the higher plan will lead it all to the ultimate good. On second read he is the antique weapon only other soldiers find beautiful and his only saving grace is that he is being Used. He will never get what he wants, but neither will he get what he deserves. The Culture, meanwhile, gets what it needs, and we are told up front that it does not need any kind of hero. Rereading Use Of Weapons lets us know what that truly means.

(Edited to add - on reflection, Zakalwe is a kind of reverse Lymond. Lymond is a romantic hero, and in Game Of Kings he and the book work very hard to make us think he is a complete bastard. Lymond's curse is that whatever he does he does well, so winning sympathy back when his motivations are revealed is quite an achievement, though for me, in a way, he never becomes truly likable. Still, the book has the advantage that anyone going in will assume that the bastarding behaviour of the main character is some sort of elaborate ruse. Zakalwe's behaviour is assumed to be on some level heroic because he is tormented and because he is part of a complex Machiavellian strategy to Do Good. But no. It turns out that guy you think is being a bastard because he has to be is really just fundamentally a bastard. As I say, I don't know if Banks was influenced by Dunnett, but I really hope he was.)