#127 in Science fiction
Look to Windward
- 369
- Pages
- about 7 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“Look to Windward” shows the Culture living with a war eight centuries past and with a mistake of its own, and its characters make that weight felt. Some who have read several of the earlier Culture novels find little here that is new. Praise goes to the care Banks takes over the people at its centre, an artificial mind among the most memorable, and to the way the novel weighs good intentions against their results.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Look to Windward is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, first published in 2000. It is Banks' sixth published novel to feature the Culture. The book's dedication reads: "For the Gulf War Veterans". The novel takes its title from a line in T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land:
Reading order · Culture series
Full order & progress →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.4 across 287 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 66% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Science fiction average of 7.8. That is how 8.2 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.2 | 35 | 12% |
| Hardcover | 8.4 | 252 | 88% |
Frequently asked
How long is Look to Windward?
It has 369 pages — shorter than 67% of the ranked books in Science fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Science fiction — with scores between 8.1 and 8.2, closest to this book.
