The man known as Cheradenine Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances' foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets through intrigue, dirty tricks, and military action. The woman known as Diziet Sma plucked him from obscurity and pushed him toward his present eminence, but despite all their dealings she did not know him as well as she thought. Told in two converging timelines - one moving forward through Zakalwe's missions, the other reaching back into the past he cannot escape - Use of Weapons is a novel about the distance between what a man does and what he is. Iain M. Banks' most structurally ambitious Culture novel, and his most devastating.
