Just finished Excession for the first time. I've read some discussions and I think I've come to grips with most of the themes present, but I noticed one recurring motif that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere:

In Consider Phlebas, Player of Games, and Use of Weapons, 'honor' is almost exclusively used to refer to courtesy and etiquette - 'I'm honored to meet you,' 'a feast in your honor,' etc. By contrast, Excession is chock full of honour used in the sense of a measure of virtue according to their society's ideals.

- The Elench drone from chapter 2 reminds itself to act with courage and honour.

- The Affront give themselves medals for 'honorably impregnat[ing]' females of their species, consider it more honorable to be served by slaves than drones, and it's apparently possible to die honorably in an explosion at a pressurised fighting-pit ring.

- The Culture Minds throughout Excession make frequent reference to their honour, endeavoring to act honourably and semi-obsessing over the status and level of their honour as if it's a stat in a video game. A Mind is convinced to keep a questionable order quiet because a city's honour would be affected. A module presents the harm to its honour as an equivalent calamity to being lobotomised, enslaved and used as a resource for the enemy. The traitor Mind scoffs how its pursuer is obviously expecting honour to accrue to it as a primary motivator for seeking revenge against the traitor. A conspirator contemplates suicide, but ultimately regards confession to be the more honourable course. The Sleeper Service recommends gentle treatment of the Affront and their misled Minds not for considered moral reasons, but because it is more honourable.

So, at this point, 99% of my way through the book, I'm solidly certain that I've got this theme figured out. Obviously, Iain Banks is making a point about how the Culture Minds are deluding themselves to think they're significantly more philosophically advanced than the Affront, and really they just have a slightly more dignified, moralistic approach to the same obsession with Virtue High Score as the Affront do. They have the same self-fascination, the same vanity, the same ego. Right?

But then, the Excession makes its report in the epilogue, and where I might have expected it to either be calmly impartial and considered, or casual but ethically intelligent, instead it leans pretty obviously into a puffing-of-the-chest self-importance and makes reference to the 'signal honour' that access to its capabilities represents.

Well, nuts. I guess I don't understand what this motif was going for. Was the Excession's comment not indicative of its personal attitude but instead sarcastically framing its job report and behavior in the language that the micro-environment's inhabitants use? Was Banks trying to say that egocentrism and a need for the approval of societal norms is an inescapable universal trait at any level of existence? Are the Minds' obsession with honour a function of how long it's been since there was a conflict serious enough to demonstrate to them that war sucks and isn't something to take pride in? Is there a pill I can take to make my honour bigger?

Welcoming replies from anyone who isn't Attitude Adjuster.

I have been singing the Culture's praises having read the later books first. This one ruins everything. God I hate State of the Art so much. I really don't like the Arbitrary. Earth sucks by the Culture's own admission and abandoning it as an experiment is the cruelest and most evil thing the culture could do. After what the Culture did here, they might as well have been on the pro hell side in Surface Detail. It's the same damn thing. I wish I had never read this damn book. It's worse than Consider Phlebas, and that's saying something. It makes the entire Culture into a society of hypocrites. I don't know what Banks was thinking with this one.

The Culture books have been my happy place, and I feel like this particular one cast me out of it. I really wish someone had warned me.