[arethuza]

I've read Peter Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy and the Commonwealth Saga - the latter is much better but still suffers a lot, in my view, from poor characterization - something that Banks can be very good at (his bad guys can occasionally come from central casting though).

Banks is in a different class from Hamilton - in general I think the quality of his work has dropped off a bit but some of his earlier writing is exceptional: Use of Weapons is particularly strong.

[huhtenberg]

I read several Culture books in addition to the Algebraist and the Use of Weapons was the only one that I genuinely liked. I was constantly under an impression that I am reading a screenplay - good bones, but lacking the works and details that would actually turn reading into a wow experience... which is what I got from Commonwealth Saga. To each his own though of course :)