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Notes -
Agreed. To the point where you should probably spoiler-tag that last sentence. The catch is that those epilogues have completely different valence depending on the book.
So far, I’ve read Phlebas and Windward, Player, and Use. I’ve got copies of a couple later ones, and I’m consciously avoiding Excession.
My working theory is that the novels can be divided by whether Banks was using the Culture as a stand-in for American imperialism or American hegemony. The epilogues in “imperialism” books are awkward because it’s not like they were hiding their message. The ones in “hegemony” books work a little better, since theyat least try to function as a twist . All in all, though, I have to agree that the epilogues don’t usually add much.
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