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erebus53 's review for:
Consider Phlebas
by Iain M. Banks
adventurous
dark
This is an antiheroic tale of a zealot who is fighting for life-kind against a Culture that has elevated its AI to personhood, and its biology to the whims of genetic manipulation, forcefield technology and blase attitudes toward sex and gender. I think I would like the book more if it was less like an action movie, but its depictions of large masses crashing into things are quite memorable and epic in scale.
There are a few horrific elements in the story, and many of them involve poo. Body horror elements include the depiction of a monstrous human who is fat and bald and gender indeterminate, which is going to be a hard limit for some readers.
The tech is cool, the sci-fi is relatively unsexist for 1987 (but yes it's there, and often as a sign that a person is a jerk). The aliens are people and the humans are alien. Most of the characters, while occasionally sympathetic, are not very nice people. There is some poetic recursion in the tale that makes parts of it feel poignant.
This was a nostalgia re-read for me. I almost don't want to read the third book of this series because I remember loving it and I don't know if it will hold up.
There are a few horrific elements in the story, and many of them involve poo. Body horror elements include the depiction of a monstrous human who is fat and bald and gender indeterminate, which is going to be a hard limit for some readers.
The tech is cool, the sci-fi is relatively unsexist for 1987 (but yes it's there, and often as a sign that a person is a jerk). The aliens are people and the humans are alien. Most of the characters, while occasionally sympathetic, are not very nice people. There is some poetic recursion in the tale that makes parts of it feel poignant.
This was a nostalgia re-read for me. I almost don't want to read the third book of this series because I remember loving it and I don't know if it will hold up.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Body horror, Drug use, Fatphobia, Gun violence, Hate crime, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Sexism, Sexual content, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Cannibalism, Murder, Alcohol, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism