In the context of the Culture novels, the polite way of putting it would be that Banks had a penchant for using scenes of extreme horror and depravity as contrast to the utopian aspects of his writing, not to mention the SF spy games and gun porn. I’ve never read a novel of his that didn’t have at least some of the same, though, and I’ve read some of his non-SF work.
In the context of the Culture novels, the polite way of putting it would be that Banks had a penchant for using scenes of extreme horror and depravity as contrast to the utopian aspects of his writing, not to mention the SF spy games and gun porn. I’ve never read a novel of his that didn’t have at least some of the same, though, and I’ve read some of his non-SF work.