I deliberately waited to start The Culture and it was worth the wait. Fast paced, exciting, perplexing in places, I thoroughly enjoyed reading my first Iain M. Banks. Straight on the The Player of Games. ( )

Maybe the first Culture novel. Great writing, characterization. Wish I had read this one first, though many say it doesn't matter what order you read them in.

Some fabulously exciting, cinematic scenes, plus moral ambiguity, interesting characters, and a galactic war as the backdrop. Recommended.
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Epic space adventure. Fairly dry in my opinion and longer than necessary, but does offer some glimpses into the universe of the Culture which may become more exciting as I read further. tbc ( )

Gah! I've somehow gotten locked out of my e-book version of this. Curses on DRM! My rating is based on what I've read so far. This is not my favorite book in Banks' series on The Culture. But maybe there was more to the ending... ( )

I wasn't taken with my first Iain Banks book, The Wasp Factory. We read it for book club, so I did not plan on reading him again. However, someone mentioned that his science fiction was markedly different and I should give Consider Phlebas a try.
It didn't turned out well. The writing style is not terribly strong and the story is substantially worse. The problem with the plot seems to be the same as The Wasp Factory: pacing. There isn't really a lot of structure and too much time is spent on irrelevant side stories. I was never actually engaged in the book.
It wasn't all bad though. The author invented an interesting futuristic game (eg, The Glass Bead Game) and the war setting was reasonable. Nevertheless, this is the type of useless action novel that really ruins the name of science fiction for the public. ( )