I had forgotten how brutal this one was. Not just in the body damage, body horror sense but in the emotional sense as well.
This one is jam packed with ideas. Hell as virtual afterlife. Hell as a commodity to be outsourced. Hell is nothing but a choice. The exploration of these ideas makes this book skip along very enjoyably. If brutally.
It rates 5 stars from me on this re-read due to the ideas. It has a slight issue with a whole character arc being absolutely redundant. Something the author himself cheerily alludes to in the epilogues. To be fair this did make me giggle (I had forgotten about this in the 15 or so years since I read this last) but is still an odd thing not to just cut from the book.
There is a call back to Use of Weapons at the end (again, I had forgotten) which makes me think Banks intended this to be the last Culture book but then The Hydrogen Sonata exists. I remember nothing of The Hydrogen Sonata but I am going to lay off re-reads for a while as I have a huge stack of new stuff waiting to be explored.
Of course, this is recommended and I will say still it is still absolutely relevant and thought provoking.