review:
This is a fantastic book for so many reasons, but my favourite is that it concerns 'Minds' - which are AI superintelligences that typically house and run huge ships as a body. There are some humans involved in the story, but they are part of the larger story of a Mind. There is politics and civilisation level threats and manouvers - and its the Minds doing the heavy-lifting. Rather than assign human attributes to machines, the story brilliantly shows how human attributes are inscrutinable in a transcended superintelligence. And to top off all this is a physics-bending phenomenon which is the titular 'excession'. This was fun reading. I will continue to read more Culture novels because of the rewarding world-building and the diversity of story materials as well as the distinct philosophical optimism.,