I've attempted to read an Iain M. Banks book before. Feersum Endjinn did me in and forced me to beat a hasty retreat-- I was in high school at the time and I just don't think I had the patience to really dig deep and get into that book. (Now that I've read Garcia Marquez's Autumn of The Patriarch, I might give it another try) but the experience left me somewhat leery of Banks. I mean, I tried and failed- maybe the guy just wasn't for me, right?
Well, then he died of cancer. And there were so many people talking about what an amazing writer he was and how amazing his series of Culture novels were that I figured I had to give him another shot and I figured there was no better place to start than with his very first Culture novel, Consider Phlebas. I was not disappointed. Let me just add that I get it, I get it, I get it and I want to read everything that he's ever written like right now, because Consider Phlebas was an amazing book and the ending just about blew my mind.
Horza Gorbachul is a shape-shifting Changer who works for the Idrians who are locked in a war with The Culture- he's charged with tracking down one of the Culture's Minds (hyper intelligent, sentient machines that power the Culture's warships, planets, orbitals and some say the culture itself) that has fled and hidden itself away on the dead planet of Schar's World which is protected by a barrier maintained by the god-like and neutral Dra'zon who allow nobody to enter, save the Changers who were allowed to live there as custodians of the planet.
He is captured by allies of the Culture, escapes back to his Idrian handlers and narrowly escapes death again before falling in with a company of mercenaries lead by their Captain Kraiklyn. Kraiklyn leads the crew on a series of disastrous raid, which kill some of their number before revealing that is he is heading to the Orbital of Vavatch where a high-stakes game of galactic poker called Damage (because it really does cause damage to the players) is going on and Kraiklyn wants to cash in. Crashing on the Orbital, Horza evades a psychotic cannibal and eventually takes on Kraiklyn's identity and heads for the Schar's World to retrieve the lost Mind.
I won't spoil the ending for anyone but needless to say, it was amazing. And I'll give fair warning to people who might be thinking that this is a book that they want to read: you must persevere! Banks doesn't condescend to his readers in anyway. He doesn't construct the world and all its players before starting his story, he merely turns you loose in his universe- it's up to you the readers to figure it out as you go. He doesn't exactly drop you into things media res but it's close. The complexity of the characters, the motivations of Horza especially are fascinating as he grows to question his allegiance to the Idrians, especially after they arrive on Schar's World for the final conflict to retrieve the lost Mind.
Probably the masterstroke that really left me stunned, amazed and wanting to read more was the appendices, followed the epilogue. It's fascinating because Banks has taken a long-time staple of science fiction- namely the Star Wars like prologue to set the stage of a world and inverted it, providing acres of context about the war between the Culture and the Idrians and what happened to the characters of the story after the events you just read.
Overall: Sign me up for more. I can't wait to get my hands on the next one of these wonderful, amazingly complex novels just to see what other adventures Iain M Banks has written in the universe of The Culture. This ranks right up next to Ken Macleod as probably one of the best science fiction discoveries I've ever had. **** out of ****
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