Consider Iain M. Banks. an unsentimental, often ruthless writer. his characters are provided robust emotional lives and richly detailed backgrounds... all the better to punish the reader when those characters meet their often bleak fates. his narratives are ornate affairs, elaborately designed, full...
2.5 starsMy first attempt to read Consider Phlebas began a couple of years ago. I made it to the fifth chapter and abandoned the book. This past June, the SciFi and Fantasy Book Club selected Consider Phlebas as the science fiction group read. The discussion leader provided two avenues for discou...
I'm not sure why I understand this to be considered a classic. I've held off on reading Banks for a number of years, and I don't really see myself going back after reading this novel. I found it dragging, wandering, and an overall meaningless conclusion with characters that didn't matter to the st...
This is the second Culture book I read but the first one Iain M. Banks wrote. One of us did something wrong, because I liked The Player of Games a lot more, and yet my reasons for not liking Consider Phlebas are almost all about what the book isn't.It isn't about the Culture, for one thing. Sort of....
A high-speed action-packed tale, and also a serious one, treating a number of themes with considerable subtlety. As notable for the history and society it develops, as for its moral complexity; what appealed to me the most, though, was all the distinct and believable characters, empathetically portr...
I'm not sure what to say here. I'm left thinking, "hunh." I started out not caring about any of the characters and by the end that had only changed slightly. The main character has a complex concept of morality that could be defined as highly moral but more so "sociopath." It started out as kind of ...
On one level, I could tell that this was probably pretty well written hard sci-fi. On another, unfortunately, I just never got to the point where I cared, so I stopped reading after a hundred pages or so. This may have had more to do with me than with the book, but there you have it.
Many discerning readers, even ones who like SF, will reflexively sneer if you say the dreaded words "space opera". One need only think of E.E. Doc Smith, for a long time the unquestioned king of this particular sub-genre. I read Galactic Patrol when I was at primary school; like innumerable other ge...
I read this a long time ago, but I thought I should explain my 1 star a little, from what I remember..Basically most of the way through this book I was just thinking to myself "Where is this going?", I can't remember any major plotline, I'm not sure there was one, just a string of happenings, mostly...
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