this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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Oh, if what you want is deep stuff about The Culture, Phlebas is hardly it. It is usually recommended because it has the most traditional “Hero on a mission” plot structure and is also the first one ever published. It gets more exciting after the island cult section. But truly Horza is not a very charismatic protagonist, and the reader spends most of the time away from The Culture. I usually recommend to read The Player of Games first, it starts deep into The Culture and quickly breaks your head with the crazy stuff that happens when the plot gets going, and it actually has a relatable protagonist. If you want the most The Culture experience, Excession is perhaps the most esoteric one. There are basically no humanoid characters in that one. Surface Detail has the most relatable characters and plot, without neglecting hard sci-fi concepts.
Strange, I read The Player of Games relatively recently, and I didn't care for it all that much. I just really couldn't root for Gurgeh. That kind of wrecked it for me.
I sort of lost interest in the series because of it. Does the next book in the series have a more sympathetic protagonist?
None of the books have a sympathetic protagonists. These are people who are morally and culturally so remote that you will almost never feel sympathetic for them. Some are straight up genocide for hire agents. Other are sexual perverts encouraged by the limitless nature of the power granted by they belonging to The Culture. Another few are neurotic messes. Curiously I find the stories and books that are lead by the Minds to be the most compelling and empathetic to the human condition. The most aliens of aliens are also usually way more sympathetic than the humanoids. You got to understand that Banks projected on The Culture the best but also the worst of Eurocentric (particularly English) colonialism, and with it all its anxieties and fears. Sometimes critically, sometimes not so much. This are not Americana pulp fiction Space Operas or young adult action packed dystopias. But more post-modernist elaborations on the fringes of human experience, or sentient experience altogether. Definitely an acquired taste and not meant to be read with a turned off brain.
Nice, so I started with the wrong one basically... I will follow your comment and go read the player of games after this. I was just afraid it never got better but you reassured me. I thought the series had some order so I started with the first one. Honestly, being separated books works even better for me. Thank you!
Oh no, this is not a serial. You pretty much won't ever see any reoccurring character. Other than some vague reference to Minds from previous books and some stories that share roughly the same time period (counted in the thousands of years), only The Culture itself and the Special Circumstances are semi-permanent fixtures of the books.
Oh cool! Thank you!