Reading a friend's recommendation is risky because I don't quite believe my friends when they say it's okay if I don't like their favorite books as much as they did. This one was nuanced enough that even though I stand by my three-out-of-five-star rating, I want to re-read it to pick up on the details I had missed the first time. The star of Iain M. Banks's world is the drones. Unlike our artificial intelligence, these bots are full of personalities; they hold grudges; they feel embarrassments; they watch birds; they kill off galactic civilizations. Honestly, I wouldn't mind an artificial intelligence killing us humans off if it could be as half as funny as Flere-Imsaho.