You were asking for Banks recommendations and I do have a couple to offer. Although my reading is hugely biased towards SF I have to say that I prefer a number of Banks’s non-genre novels to the one which are marketed as specifically SF. I suspect that this is because a number of them have quite strong fantasy or technology elements. I would say that both “The Bridge” and “Walking On Glass” could easily have been marketed as science fiction novels, and damn fine ones too. In particular, “Walking On Glass” is one of my favorite novels of all time in any category.

I have to say that I share your low opinion of “Use of Weapons” and in general I don’t care all that much for most of the Culture novels. They always feel to me like science fiction for people who don’t like science fiction very much. However, there are two Iain M Banks novels which I unhesitatingly recommend, books in which the authors wit and literary playfulness are allied to strong speculative ideas and really formidable stories: these are “Against a Dark Background” and the superb “Player of Games.” If you don’t like one of these then I think you had probably better just give up on Banks.