Consider Phlebas

, #1

by

471 pages

English language

Published Dec. 1, 1987 by Macmillan.

ISBN:
978-0-333-44138-1
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
15197422

View on OpenLibrary

View on Inventaire

3 stars (3 reviews)

Consider Phlebas, first published in 1987, is a space opera novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks. It is the first in a series of novels about an interstellar post-scarcity society called the Culture. The novel revolves around the Idiran–Culture War, and Banks plays on that theme by presenting various microcosms of that conflict. Its protagonist Bora Horza Gobuchul is an enemy of the Culture. Consider Phlebas is Banks's first published science fiction novel and takes its title from a line in T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land. A subsequent Culture novel, Look to Windward (2000), whose title comes from the previous line of the same poem, can be considered a loose follow-up.

6 editions

reviewed Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks (Culture, #1)

Clearly I don't like Culture books

2 stars

This is my third or fourth Culture book, and probably the one I liked least. Basically (theme on all my dislikes) I didn't like the characters, even the protagonist. And his motivation of "this side of the war, I guess" just didn't really feel like it held up.

I think on a re-read I'd be less irritated by how the protagonist (admittedly, realistically) just lurches from situation to situation without any real overarching plan, but as with every other Banks book, I struggle to summarise the plot simply. A lot of things happen but their end relation to the plot on the cover is low.

Subjects

  • Imaginary wars and battles
  • Fiction