The payment that Zakalwe demands is the location of a woman, named Livueta. He must make contact with Beychae, an old colleague, who lives in a politically unstable star cluster, to further the aims of the Culture in the region.

The forward-moving narrative stream deals with the attempts of Diziet Sma and a drone named Skaffen-Amtiskaw (of Special Circumstances, a division of Contact Section) to re-enlist Zakalwe for another job. Further complicating this structure is a prologue and epilogue set shortly after the events of the main narrative, and many flashbacks within the chapters. The story told by the former moves forward chronologically (as the numbers suggest) and tells a self-contained story, while the latter is written in reverse chronology with each chapter successively earlier in Zakalwe's life. ), while the other is numbered in reverse with Roman numerals (XIII, XII. The numbers of the chapters indicate which stream they belong to: one stream is numbered forward in words (One, Two. The book is made up of two narrative streams, interwoven in alternating chapters. The novel recounts several of these interventions and Zakalwe's attempts to come to terms with his own past. The narrative takes the form of a biography of a man called Cheradenine Zakalwe, who was born outside of the Culture but was recruited into it by Special Circumstances agent Diziet Sma to work as an operative intervening in less advanced civilizations.

It is the third novel in the Culture series. First printing.Use of Weapons is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. The jacket has a little fading to the spine and some rubbing to the corners with a small closed tear to the bottom corner of the front corner and another that is about a quarter of an inch long to the top rear corner. The central section of the pages have yellow spotting through them with this being quite heavy in places particularly around the place where the paper stock changes but the remainder of the pages are generally unmarked. Scattered light spotting to the endpapers. The bottom edges are less affected with the central band displaying spotting rather than being a solid band of a different colour.

Browning and scattered spotting to the fore edges. The top edges have dark browning with some spotting. The page edges are heavily browned and a half-inch section at the centre has more dark browning because of the different paper stock used in producing the book.

Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks