Consider Phlebas (The Culture)
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'Banks is a phenomenon: the wildly successful, fearlessly creative author of brilliant and disturbing non-genre novels, he's equally at home writing pure science fiction of a peculiarly gnarly energy and elegance' William Gibson 'There is now no British SF writer to whose work I look forward with greater keenness' The Times 'Poetic, humorous, baffling, terrifying, sexy - the books of Iain M. Banks are all these things and more' NME
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The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction. Consider Phlebas - a space opera of stunning power and awesome imagination.
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30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Wasp Factory in space... brutally good.,
This review is from: Consider Phlebas (The Culture) (Paperback)
Just as Iain Banks' first novel "The Wasp Factory" was a calling-card for his somewhat twisted world-view, so "Consider Phlebas", his first SF novel as Iain M, gives you a pretty clear idea of what to expect in his subsequent SF. Extraordinary as it may seem to anyone who has read much of his other work, this book takes first prize for scope of ideas and - most particularly - inventive emotional brutality. This is emphatically not an easy read. Yes, it's space opera. Yes, it's a gung-ho adventure story. No, it's not like any of the other 5 million books in this genre. For its sheer skill at leaving horrible images in your mind as a result of really quite limited violent episodes the only comparison which springs to mind is Julian May's "Intervention".The story sees a man - well, not exactly a man - caught on the wrong side (defined as the one which is going to lose) in a galaxy-wide conflict. His efforts to assist his alien allies lead him into a spiral of death and destruction where even his identity is gradually stripped away. The pointlessness of his desperate struggle is finally confirmed in the appendix, where in a couple of lines Banks creates the final, overwhelming message of the book as a whole. Of course, he gave it away in the title.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great story well told,
By
This review is from: Consider Phlebas (The Culture) (Paperback)
This is my first Iain Banks Novel and proved to be an absorbing and thrilling read. (Thks Mark). The plot (set in the backdrop of a Galatic war between the Idirans and the Culture) moves along at a nice pace and develops characters to a degree that you quickly sympathise with them even when they're diametrically opposed.
Bank's imagination is un-surpassed as you experience orbitals, GSV's, quirky robots,a life threatening game of poker called damage and much more.. The ending is a little disappointing but serves to emphasise that you have just read about the experiences of a small band of mercenaries, caught up in huge conflict played out over unimaginable distances spanning many years. (Also liked the small appendices at the back of the book detailing the reasons for the war) On the whole this is a good introduction to Ian Banks and I would not hesitate in recommending this book to anyone.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
sci-fi creation,
By Talc Demon (U.K.) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Consider Phlebas (The Culture) (Paperback)
Consider Phlebas is an intricately woven novel, set against a sci-fi backdrop.
Although the sci- part sometimes gets a bit too intricate for its own good, the main characters are well-developed to have a depth of personality allowing the reader to like, dislike, be ambivalent about and empathise with them. This is as well as a depth of context which allows the reader to wallow in the fictional history of the characters and their various cultures. The novel is set within an inter-galactic war of opposing ideologies, and charts the main character's mission. He travels through various adventures with the novel exploring the customs of the sci-fi civilisations created by Banks, which is where the combination of sci- and fi- really becomes potent. The plot is fairly quick-moving and cohesive and although as with other Banks' novels I've read, is not particularly memorable, what is memorable and makes the book worth reading are the imaginary world and cultures created by Banks.
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