Consider Phlebas
by Iain M. Banks
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Book Reviews of Consider Phlebas
Book Review: Could Have Been Better
Summary: 3 Stars
Consider Phlebas is a tough one to review. On one hand I love Banks' voice, his big ideas and up until the end this book moves at a good clip. On the other hand I found the plotting to be random and a bit contrived. I'll weigh the pros and cons in a second -
There is a war of galactic scale going on between the mega-utopian Culture and the super-religious Idiran. A sentient mechanical device called a Mind has taken refuge on a planet called Schar's World after an Idiran/Culture conflict. Horza, a mercenary who can change his physical appearance (a Changer) is employed by the Idiran to retrieve the Mind before the Culture snag it back for themselves. This isn't so easy, soon Horza finds himself unlucky as he goes from one screwed up situation to the next.
There's a lot to like here. The scope of the war is massive, I found Horza to be mostly likeable (though not quite as developed as he could have been). Iain does a great job painting the scenes. I love some of the ideas he implemented, even if some of them aren't his own.
On the flip-side I have substantial gripes. First, this novel is little more than a few massive digressions surrounded by the thin underlying plot. The crazy adventures Horza finds himself on have almost nothing to do with the underlying story. The version of this book I have is 468 pages long and I bet only 130 pages are dedicated to the underlying plot. Unfortunately it turns out that the few pages that are dedicated to the plot just aren't all that good.
I found the ending to be quite lacking. I'm not going to spoil it here, but Banks attempts to pull off an emotional ending and really it just falls flat. Banks will use contrived plot devices to attempt a whiz-bang ending (a convenient pregnancy to try and pull at emotions later on, for instance) but really it just doesn't work here, there's just not enough going as far as character development, or emotional investment to pull an ending like this off and make it memorable. Unfortunately when we finally get to the real meat at the end of this novel is when the book slogs a bit. In the end the book spins off into multiple threads showing the POV of the conflict from all angles, which is great, *but* he spends too much time trying to create tension. Unfortunately the 130 (or so) pages could have been whittled down to 50 or less without much loss.
So, Consider Phlebas isn't exactly a dud. The trademark Banks prose is there, the big ideas are there, we get a good dose of Culture history and such, but in the end (literally) it falls a bit flat. Check it out if you already love Banks, if you have never read a Culture book then start with Player of Games and come back to this one later on.
Book Review: A Taste of Culture!
Summary: 4 Stars
The Culture is a civilization of sentient beings, both organic and "machine" (think artificial intelligence with all the rights of intelligent life forms) based. There is no need for money except to use in less evolved cultures. The Culture doesn't even have goals of planetary conquest. They just build enormous artificial habitats in space.
But the Culture does pay attention to those other civilizations that can upset the status quo, or keep the Culture from its path to enlightenment.
In Consider Phlebas, author Iain Banks follows one small chapter in the decades long battle between the Culture and the Idirans. The Idirans have been very successful in expanding their sphere of influence, and the godless Culture is a dangerous irritant. Religious passion is an alien concept to the Culture, and their Contact branch, and the Special Circumstances division within Contact, must fight a war.
As a story within this battle, a Mind (AI) is stranded on a peculiar planet (protected for reasons unknown by a vastly powerful entity that allows no armies to approach). A team of Changers has had a historical presence on this planet, and the Idirans have one Changer loyal to them (Horza) who used to be stationed there. His mission is to return to the planet, locate the Mind (with its secrets of the Culture's technologies), and turn it over to the Idirans. The Culture simply wants to rescue one of their own, the Mind. They are confident in an eventual outcome of the war in their favor, but they recognize that the capture of the Mind will delay success for a few years. They are very analytic.
This book is the tale of Horza and his extraordinary adventures in getting to the planet hiding the Mind, and finding the Mind on the planet. The uniqueness of AI sentience, the Culture's technologies, the physiology of the Changers, and determination of the Idirans, all make this an intriguing tale and a unique sci-fi offering. Banks makes Horza a horrible person who seems to care not a wit who is hurt or killed (usually killed) in his search for the Mind, while trying to make the reader sympathetic to his life and loves. I'm not sure this works. However, what does work is the introduction of the Culture. This is the second Culture book that I've read (the first was The Player of Games). I was told they don't have to be read in any particular order, and that certainly is bearing true.
The Culture series is an exciting addition to the sci-fi literature. You'll finish that last page, close the cover, and find yourself just sitting and thinking. Isn't that what great sci-fi is all about?
Book Review: Is that it? Seriously?
Summary: 2 Stars
As I approached the end of "Consider Phlebas," I was prepared to give it three stars - an okay, occasionally enjoyable, and relatively easy read. But when I finally finished the book, I couldn't believe my brain. So yes, there are spoilers within.
So this is the basic story: Two large spacefaring cultures - the human "Culture" and the non-human "Idirans" - are waging war. It's very unclear why they are fighting. The protagonist, Horza, thinks that the Culture is a decadent society which has given itself over to domination by machines. The fact is, though, we've seen plenty of sci-fi authors describe what machine-dominated societies look like... and unless we're supposed to regard Horza as a wildly misinformed fanatic (and I don't think we are), the Culture looks nothing like that. Rather, it's just some rich civilization that sometimes likes to use robot assistants and relies on a few powerful robot brains for occasional advice. Big deal, but Banks seems to think it should be regarded as ooga-booga-scary-artificial-intelligence business.
Given how non-threatening the Culture seems, Horza's loyalty to the Idirans barely makes sense, but it is what it is. Anyhow, pursuant to that loyalty, Horza goes off on a mission to recover some fancy-dancy Culture AI called a "Mind." Why this Mind is such a big deal is never really explained.
In any event, Horza gets assigned this task early on. Most of the book is a series of incredibly long detours that do nothing to advance the plot but just showcase Horza getting into heaps of trouble. He falls in with a sorry lot of pirates and spends hundreds of pages getting shot at and nearly eaten (!) until he can finally commandeer their ship and head toward his quarry.
Basically, the entire book until this point is just "The Wacky Adventures of Horza Gobuchul." And yet the denoument is really what makes this book such a masterwork of fail. Horza at long last chases down this uber-important Mind and then... he dies. That's it. Nothing else happens.
Maybe this book is supposed to be some sort of meditation on the futility of war. If so, it was terribly weak. Anyhow, who knows what Banks meant. The bottom line is that the entire book is a huge chase for a Maguffin that ends with a total whimper.
If you're looking to be disappointed with a meaningless story and deeply unfulfilling conclusion, then this book is for you!
(P.S. Why two stars and not one? I reserve one-star ratings for hateful works. This book was terrible, but not in any way hateful.)
Book Review: A universe of cliches
Summary: 2 Stars
I bought this book based on the glowing reviews found on Amazon. I'll admit it's not entirely unreadable and for enthusiasts of military scifi, there are some things to like here (the cover art, for example, is awesome). However, taken as a whole this novel was far more irritating than engrossing.
The small annoyances: the back cover and the prologue inform us that the central conflict of this novel will be two interstellar nations racing to recover a powerful AI computer that's stranded on an off-limits planet. In the second chapter, the main character learns this as well, and the novel is set up. Promising, eh? Three pages later, our protagonist is thrown completely off the trail and spends an eternity doing things unrelated to the central plot. Meanwhile, the dialogue is awkward and every page has at least one poorly constructed sentence.
The real annoyances, however, are the clichés. Chapter 1 intends to introduce us to the main character in a dramatic prison rescue... straight out of any spy, romance, scifi or western novel you may have read. The primary aliens are giant monsters (who would have guessed that?), with 3-legs instead of two. They're also really loud. In chapter 2, we see the primary character make an escape from a starship under attack that's suspiciously similar to the opening scene of Star Wars episode IV. In Chapter 3, our main character is in a fight to the death to join a crew of pirates. Seriously, points for good taste apply, but I'd still prefer that you didn't rip off Alexandre Dumas and `The Count of Monte Cristo." The Captain of the pirates is a bit of a rogue who won his ship in a game of chance. The ship itself is a beaten down frigate, but the Captain swears that it's the fastest ship in this part of the galaxy. Some of his crewmates are basically humanoid, but covered in light brown fur. Honestly. Continuing the Star Wars motif, we soon see some ground combat (involving laser weapons) in a Temple on a planet looking suspiciously like Yavin IV. I could go on, but you get the point.
It's not entirely awful, and if you're a true scifi junkie you'll get your money's worth. For the non-enthusiasts who just want a decent story with some cool space battles, I strongly recommend Scott Westerfeld's "Succession" novels.
Book Review: Seminal work of "new" space opera- but not to everyone's taste.
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm right in the demographic that is completely nuts about star wars, but I'm not. I saw the film in 1979 on the big screen. I was eight years old. Yes, it completely blew me away, and I was obsessed with it as a kid. I still have a soft spot for the three original movies, probably because they were seen through the eyes of a young boy without much access to TV or movies in general, and a bent toward nerdy scifi/fantasy stuff.
As I got older, I saw star wars for what I think it really is. A really great space opera for its time, with great special effects, characters and costumes. But limited. The empire and the rebels are kind of cardboard. Yoda (and I realized this the first time I saw it) has the same voice as Grover. The Ewoks are just cutesy muppets. Not to diminish it, but from an adult perspective, it just doesn't scratch my itch anymore. I'm more jaded, more sophisticated, and don't want to watch a muppet with Grover's voice dispensing Jedi wisdom.
This is where the Iain Banks culture novels come in. They scratch pretty much the same itch, but in more of an adult way. First, they're hard R for violence, sex, peril, etc. Second, there are some realistic and sophisticated political machinations going on that the characters inevitable interact with. More realistic and sophisticated than rebels vs. empire- more interesting as well. Third, they have cooler races, cooler weaponry, and WAY cooler robots!
That said, there's a certain sci-fi reader that may not like this. Someone who's into, for example, Greg Bear or John Scalzi. A more sedate and "scientific" breed of reader who likes plodding, pedestrian development, characterization, and books where the good guys always win in a nicely tied up ending. Banks doesn't play that. He writes on a grandiose scale- baroque plots, nasty alien races, awesome artificial intelligences- surprises around every corner. This is the real deal.