Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - The Player of Games

The Player of Games is a slipshod hodge-podge of underdeveloped political and personal philosophy, weak worldbuilding, fetishistic gore, and questionable motivations, all cut up and duct-taped back together into something vaguely resembling a story. If you squint at it from a distance. In the dark. Actually, instead, close your eyes and imagine the book. You’ll have a better time that way.

For every glaring plothole that Banks rushes to plug with weak retconning, another bursts open. For every question I have about the world or the story, ten more appear along with a sloppy answer. This is what happens with an overdesigned world; with so much stuff going on, you can’t satisfactorily answer all the readers’ questions without the story itself taking a backseat. There’s some amount of belief suspension on the part of the reader that’s necessary for reading any fiction. But as an author, it is Banks’s responsibility to make sure there are still stakes for the characters, that everything between the front and back covers is self-consistent. And he fails.

Before Gurgeh arrives on Eä, he’s told that the reigning empire of Azad is this horrible, barbaric, oppressive society; a society in which it’s easy to anger the elite, to offend, to not only make low-risk social mistakes but mistakes that can risk his life. When Gurgeh arrives on the planet, though, it becomes immediately apparent that Banks wanted to have a horribly brutal empire without going through the effort of actually writing one. Gurgeh’s clothes and living quarters are bugged, but he’s told that no one actually cares what he says.

Gurgeh isn’t disqualified from the game on the grounds of having Flere-Imsaho (a drone) around, even though parts of the Empire wants him out enough to attempt an assassination.

That’s not even accounting for the myriad of minor inconsistencies that crop up throughout the book, even further suggesting that Banks should have fired his editor.

The characters’ motivations don’t make sense, either. The beginning of the book sets up Gurgeh as this disillusioned game-player, looking for something bigger and better, bored of always winning (even though he actually loses to a rando very early on). But that’s not what gets him to go to Azad;

Mawhrin-Skel’s threat does, even though there’s no guarantee that by agreeing to go, Mawhrin-Skel would even be reinstated in Special Circumstances

. In fact, it surprised me that the threat to his reputation meant anything, because this is only one of two instances where Gurgeh doesn’t approach a situation with anything but cool indifference; the other is when he’s

facing death

. Mawhrin-Skel’s desire

to be reinstated in Special Circumstances

might make sense, but all he can get out of Gurgeh is the promise that he’ll try. Contact’s motivations don’t make sense until the very, very end, and even then, barely; they want Gurgeh to go to this new, imperialistic planet - a hugely risky endeavor given that they don’t want to give away any details about the Culture - and play... a game?

Even though the whole point was for Flere-Imsaho to assassinate Nicosar, the Culture had no reason to believe that that would dissolve their entire Empire - and it shouldn’t have, if Banks was actually a competent storyteller.

And even Nicosar’s motivations - and Azad’s as a whole - are fuzzy. Why would a xenophobic, spacefaring empire accept an alien into the locus of their society

and let him get so far as to challenge the emperor

? It just feels lazy.

Not to mention that Gurgeh is an extremely unlikeable character, and it’s genuinely hard to tell if it’s intentional. Gurgeh is every nerdy incel’s dream - women fawn over him (but he’s not gay, ew), he wins every game (except that one where he lost all the way at the beginning), he can be mean to his friends and drones and everything / everyone else with no repercussions except for being regarded as a hero, he is always cool and tactical and never makes mistakes.... He’s annoying, cruel, and experiences exactly zero character development.

Even minor things - the overly-descriptive writing style, the poorly-executed meta-narrator - were frustrating. The whole empire thing was a self-indulgent fetishistic gore fest. It might have been redeemable if the rest of it was any good, but it wasn’t.

The Player of Games, on a metaphorical level, feels like it’s attempting the same thing as The Left Hand of Darkness, but much worse. People writing about a humanoid society with weird gender / sex stuff tend to forget that transgender people exist. Like, oh it’s a society with a third gender!! Imagine if we had one of those, ha ha. Rolling my eyes directly into the back of my head. Must we always associate gender with domination and, consequently, subjugation? Must we refer to changing gender as a “phase”? At least Le Guin’s novel made sense!

To sum it up: this book sucked. The end

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manuphoto's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

An excellent read. The story is original and better spelled out that many similar ones (sci-fi revolving around games).

Gurgeh is an intriguing character and Banks uses his strengths and flaws in a very smart way. The drones and sentient ships are also very well fleshed out.

There is also some dark humour that I enjoyed.

The plot is relatively simple but interesting and the pacing is very good. Overall, an excellent book and a nice introduction to the Culture series for me.

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cerebulon's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark inspiring tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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gilnean's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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inferiorwit's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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thetarantulalounge's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

The Player of Games is the second in seven “Culture series” novels by Iain M. Banks. However, the novels don’t need to be read in order (or so I’m told). I started here and got along just fine.

In The Player of Games, Gurgeh is a well-known game player in The Culture – what appears to be a federated community of like-minded humanoid and synthezoid beings dedicated to the finer things in life. Work isn’t necessary, space is free to roam, decadent space islands are created at whim, and things are just like one long Fyre Fest, I guess?

Our protagonist, the titular Player of Games, is Gurgeh. He is, and I don’t think this has ever been done in a novel before, a kind of sad guy who is good at something and who women are drawn to. And he is looking for more out of life.

That’s why Gurgeh perks up when someone from The Culture shows up and asks him to commit to a five-year journey to another culture to play a game. But not just any game. An important and confusing game. Gurgeh doesn’t have much going on, so he agrees and boards a sentient spaceship for a two-year trip to the empire of Azad.

The culture of Azad is more or less based on the game of Azad and vice-versa. It’s a complicated mix of card games and then room-sized board games. Kind of like a 4-d chess experience? Gurgeh, a complete outsider to the culture, must try to learn the game, not commit any social faux pas against the (relatively) barbaric culture, and survive the journey home. It’s a little bit mystery, a little bit social commentary, a little bit of world-building.

Overall this was an enjoyable and quick-paced read. As you can probably imagine, The Culture and Azad have more and less in common than one would think at first blush. Banks has some interesting things to say about “the game,” language, economics, power, gender, sex (although some of it is dated) and more. I feel no compulsion to go grab another book from the Culture series, but this one left me with plenty of highlights and long nights page turning.

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charleyroxy's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix

4.0

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