The Jinmoti of Bozlen Two kill the hereditary ritual assassins of the new…..
Okay, I was craving some sci-fi, so I picked up the first book of The Culture series by Iain M. Banks. It's GREAT. At times, the world was awe-inspiring, and the prose was fantastic.
It gave me the same feeling I had when I first started reading Earthsea. Earthsea felt like more than just fantasy. It felt like that, kind of.
But all that changed on Schar’s World. Banks shifted his storytelling style. Near the end, it felt like three or four minutes’ worth of story stretched over more than a hundred pages, constantly jumping between viewpoints every few lines.
It felt like he was deliberately trying to annoy the reader. It wasn’t a dealbreaker, the prose was strong enough to keep me going.
But the protagonist, who initially seemed competent, delivering lines like “Who is in charge here, you or the drone over your shoulder?”, which felt relevant in the current AI climate, suddenly turned utterly stupid. Stupider than Fritz, which I thought was impossible.
Overall I liked the world. I liked the idea of a Utopian world and wanted to find out more, but now I’m not so sure. Are the rest of the books like this? I mean like the third act! Does it get better?
by LibrariansNightmare
11 Comments
I think Phlebas is god-awful, but it seems the general consensus is that the books get much better after that first one.
Consider Phlebas is nothing like the other Culture novels. To me it’s worth it for the gut punch of the epilogue and the connection to the poem, but it’s not really representative of the writing as a whole.
My memories of these books fall much more into the ‘bits you liked’ bucket than the bits you didn’t.
He does experiment with narrative and how it’s delivered in some of the other books but not to the detriment of the story IMO. Overall these books are what I judge other sci-fi by now.
This series is absolutely for you. It grows into more on the conversation on utopian society and what the larger spaces around that would be like and individuals navigating the world.
Go into The Player of Games the next book in the culture series and I feel like it gives more of exactly what you want and also giving an idea for the series that follows.
Weirdly Consider Phlebas while launching the series is a bit of an outlier in the overall series. Not that it doesn’t fit just more of an outside perspective on the culture. But the books going forward begin to really bring the world alive.
I’d definitely stick with The Culture and Iain M Banks in general, some books are misses IMO but he’s an inventive writer with a great sense of humour and loves a plot twist. Use of Weapons is probably his best, followed by Against a Dark Background (non Culture).
He also wrote straight fiction under the name Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory being the best.
I had to force myself to get through. I really wanted to like it, but I just couldn’t connect with the characters and it felt like so many chunks of the plot ended up being inconsequential. Like big stretches of the narrative could have been removed and the separated pieces reconnected with little effort. And the ending… just kind of made the entire book feel pointless to me. I’ve heard the others are much better and I intend to get to them, but I haven’t mustered up the courage yet.
I’m surprised seeing people down on this book. I actually just started it last week and I find it thrilling. Drops you right in the current of the story and so far it hasn’t let up
Walt until you get to Player of Games or Excession
He does experiment a bit so you may find some of the books more or less to your taste, but only those who never try anything new, never stumble. (I think most people’s favourites are Player of Games and Use of Weapons). Personally, I consider it overall one of the most inspiring and thoughtful sci-fi series ever written and think it absolutely worth it!
Use of Weapons is one of my all time favourites. Look to Windward is a little slow, but it’s so beautiful. Inversions is such an epic story. I literally think each new book I read in the series is the best one. Culture is the best Sci-Fi series imo. It’s the best book series for me tbf.
All of the books in the Culture series are different. There are a lot of similarities and they mostly exist in the same universe (technically all of them do, but sometimes it’s harder to tell), and the prose style is fairly consistent, but the themes, plot arcs, and narrative structures of the books vary quite a bit. I didn’t hate any of them, but I definitely liked some more than others. Player of Games, Use of Weapons, Inversions, and Excession were my favorites, and The State of the Art had some good short stories as well. In my opinion they are all worth reading just because they all have really big ideas and themes that get you thinking about the world in different ways.