Caution: may contain spoilers.
I’m somewhat disappointed with this book. Banks is so highly praised by many people I know that I had high expectations for this work. I tried to read Use of Weapons but didn’t enjoy it (will discuss that in a separate review), so I tried Consider Phlebas instead. I finished it and will admit that there are parts that I enjoyed or thought were cool but on the whole I’m unimpressed.
The whole concept of the Culture isn’t something I’m taking to: they sound repulsive. Partly due to their supposed communistic utopia was sounds improbable, sure it’s sci-fi/ fantasy, but not to my liking. The author is using the idea of the Culture being “victimised” in order to push his ideas / ideology which doesn’t make for good reading (see my previous blog post on not lecturing your audience): you become sympathetic to the under-dog who is treated unfairly and hence are more susceptible to their point of view, even if said people aren’t really any better than their enemy (the Idirians).
Add to that the general smugness of the culture and of Banks’s works in general. There are a lot of high tech sounding ideas, at least that’s what he tells us, but most of these ideas are throw away comments and far fewer ideas are actually shown. Regardless of which, there are many ideas that sound like the writer knows what he is talking about with regards to science and technology (in a hipster-like) way but his descriptions and use of such technology suggests otherwise. To me, it seems like he has picked out some cool sounding ideas from a popular science magazine and tried to incorporate them into his stories. Vaguely attractive window dressing but the story feels hollow.
StarTrek is bad for having arbitrary science and plot devices, but it feels like the creators actually put some research into the ideas (or paid consultants). Big Bang Theory (TV show) also plays on sounding complicated but they are mostly successful because the concepts are mostly real concepts that show how much research of said ideas has gone into creating the show.
There are too few characters with too much detail spent on an even smaller collection of characters that it is hard to imagine the epic background in which the story is set. It is, afterall, supposed to be galactic warfare yet this sense of scale is almost completely lost from the narrow focus on a handful of characters. The plot rambles with only a very loosely defined direction.
Note:
As I type this I’m about 25% of the way through Player of Games and I’m actually enjoying it. The plot seems more appealing and the writing is clearer.