The Hydrogen Sonata.

By Iain M Banks.

I always get the feeling that Banks is never really sure how his books will end. There will always be one or two ideas that make their way through the full novel, but much of it feels like it was just made up as he goes along.

Having said that, Banks is a strong writer. There are always passages in his books that I love. My complaint is more that this could have been a great book. Instead it's a good book if you follow the culture series. That's nice.

The Hydrogen Sonata in this case is a bit of music created as satire—difficult to play music written for now other purpose than to mock other bits of music that were only written to be difficult to play. Over time the Sonata, much to the composers chagrin,  becomes the definitive piece of music whose only purpose is to be difficult to play.

The meta joke there—a joke taking over and having consequences when people don't realize it's a joke, is the real plot of the book. In this case what happens when the Gzilt civilization discovers that their Bible was a practical joke sent to them by a neighboring alien species.

 

Sometimes characters come and go for no good reason. I get the feeling that Vyr & Tefwe were meant to be the same character. That Banks discovered that  Vyr had too travel to too many places in too short of a time to be credible, so he created Tefwe.