Consider Phlebas
by Iain M. Banks
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Book Reviews of Consider Phlebas
Book Review: Consider taking a science class (and a writing class)
Summary: 2 Stars
If you are in a spaceship that is careening toward a wall, and you fire a laser that blows the wall open, will you simply sail on through as if the wall had never been there? No. You will be kicked back by the recoil, because of Newton's Third Law.
If computer minds manage to find a human who has outpredicted the computer minds on X number of occasions, do those Minds have any good reason to believe that that individual will outpredict them on subsequent occasions? Only if the sample is large. The existence of humans who can outpredict supercomputers is an interesting thought, but is not implied by probability theory.
If you are under a hovercraft that weighs many, many tons and is supported by a downdraft of air, the pressure on you will be approximately the same as if the hovercraft were lying on top of you. You will die.
These are but a few example of the bad science in this book.
The bad plot, however, is inexcusable. The idea that Horza, who has received extensive military training, would keep alive two exceedingly dangerous hostile prisoners, when his own team consists of three relative strangers of dubious training and effectiveness, is laughable.
The overall story is also boring and pointless. There is no overarching significance to Horza's quest. Horza's motivations are only briefly sketched; the motivations of the other characters receive even less attention. There is nearly no substantive interaction between the characters, as the book proceeds from action scene to action scene.
This book is "sound and fury, signifying nothing." I won't say it's "a tale told by an idiot," but I hope Mr. Banks' writing skills have improved since this early effort.
Book Review: Some 4 stars bits, but a 2-star ending (huge spoilers!)
Summary: 3 Stars
Consider Phlebas had some 4 star moments, for sure, but the ending was utterly 2 star, and that's being generous. I've read that it was an early book that Banks rewrote, and I believe it. I think he probably tweaked the actual writing a lot, but left the basic plot. And that's a problem: the ending felt very college writing class. I mean, come on. If you want to write a story whose whole point is that war is bigger than any individual, and that no one can really change the course of it, fine. But 500 pages of "and then this happened" space opera that suddenly and abruptly ends with what amounts to "and then then they all died, pointlessly" is just facile, and bad writing, too. I get what he was trying to do, and it didn't work for me. I had the same feeling of letdown at the end of The Business actually: good writing, but the ending didn't live up to what preceded it.
The book had other problems, too. The whole Fal N'Geestra intercut story line never really went anywhere, and then just petered out annoyingly. Sad, considering that it seemed like the most interesting storyline. I also didn't like his third person inconsistent POV. We mostly know only the thoughts of the two main characters, Bora and Fal, but, very occasionally, and in the middle of segments that are told with insight into Bora's POV, we suddenly see the thoughts of someone else whose thoughts we were never privy to before, and never will be again. That's not great writing, I don't think. That said, I'm probably going to keep reading his books. The good parts really are good, and I'm hoping that his later books cure the problems I had with this one...
Book Review: A Better Starting Point
Summary: 4 Stars
My first read of Iain M. Banks was The Algebraist, which I quite enjoyed and thought worth 4 stars. That was until I read "Consider Phlebas", the first of the Culture novels, and found myself far more impressed and interested.
The main character, an interesting Changer with some nasty surprises for those who irritate him, is on the hunt for a Culture mind that decided to hide itself on a Planet of the Dead. Horza is commissioned by a race at war with the Culture to find it and get it. The commission goes to the dogs pretty much right from the first minute, and the book's plot is made of Horza's attempts to get at the Mind. Sadly, the Culture are also aware of it, and his mission, so that adds something extra.
The scope of the story is massively huge, and the universe Banks has created is simply boggling in its immense size and variety. The range and sheer detail of the universe is wildly cool, and this alone kept me hooked until the end.
Sometimes, Bank's turn of phrase stretched the mind as he said things in a strange or unusual way. However, for the most part, this added to the "other-worldliness" of the story. Only occassionally did it distract from the business of enjoying the adventure.
Although I gave this the same rating as "The Algebraist" in my ignorance, I do consider this to be a much better book and story. Having read this, I am no longer wondering what people see in Iain M. Banks.
Book Review: Well, I Finished It
Summary: 3 Stars
This is a book about a motley collection of individuals pursuing their various interests against the backdrop of a vast galaxy-wide war. The protagonist is a traitor to his species for idealogical reasons which aren't very compelling when he spells them out. The two sides in the war are driven by one side's desire to maintain a decadent, hedonistic lifestyle and the other side's religious fanaticism. I guess that's supposed to speak to "what's happening now," but I found the author's charcterization of both sides as pretty simplistic.
The protagonist makes some pretty ill-considered decisions such as taking two dangerous adversaries, along on his trek, when we already know he has no qualms about killing anyone who gets in his way. One of them he spares so that he can report him to his superiors once this is all over (really???) and the other because they seem to have some respect for each other as worthy adversaries, or some such nonsense. And enemies who seem to be dead come back to life long enough to attack the protagonist one last time.
I found it difficult to finish the book, and only managed to because I found myself with nothing else to do at the time. Still it took me quite a while. the author introduces some interesting ideas, but doesn't flesh them out much, perhaps in an effort to get you read more of the series. I'm not saying the book is bad, just that it didn't really engage me. Obvously, other reviewers liked it a lot, so it's probably just a matter of personal taste.
Book Review: Big ideas, fun beginning, horrible 2nd half
Summary: 2 Stars
I bought this book because I was intrigued by "Matter" and wanted to get in on the storyline before it, so I bought this instead. I was excited by the ideas: Minds, sentient AIs that are highly autonomous and the real leaders of the human empire, and huge space constructs: Rings, like in Niven's "Ringworld," and spheres that can encompass a sun and use 100% of the solar energy, among other things.
Unfortunately, after an exciting beginning and a strong entry into the plot, the book seems to completely lose direction and gets mired in small side-adventures that only occasionally flesh out the universe or add anything. The main character and his opponent from the other side of the battle have to work together for much of the end of the book, and the woman's actions make no sense, and her motivations are completely opaque. A hardened spy and assassin who cries and gets depressed while they search endlessly through boring tunnels? Give me a break!
I came very close to skipping whole chapters later in the book, when the characters do nothing at all except whine at each other for dozens of pages.
Other books do a better job of exploring the ideas presented here, without the frequent "dead air" chapters.