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freelatveria 's review for:
Consider Phlebas
by Iain M. Banks
adventurous
dark
Consider Phlebas kicks off the Culture series in pretty interesting fashion.
This book is most obviously a critique of war. There are some chapters after the end of the story that extrapolate the story out a bit and you get to see some of the ramifications of this story that are really sticking with me.
As for the story itself? It was good. I really liked Bora Horza Gobuchul. I thought he was a great protagonist to follow, especially with how much he seemed to hate the Culture. This series is called the Culture, yet the first book is following someone who is highly critical of it.
This is where we might ask, what is the Culture? Well if you know Star Trek, it's basically the Federation. Except where the TV show kept it pretty clean, this series is trying to show us what would this socialist paradise actually look like with real people. It would be hedonistic. There would be a lot more division among the people as we have a culture where every viewpoint is more or less valid. It's interesting, but, since I was mostly outside the Culture with this book, I feel like I just got the barest glimpse of what the Culture actually is. And also a little bit of a skewed glimpse at that.
Looking forward to checking out book 2 sometime in the near future.
This book is most obviously a critique of war. There are some chapters after the end of the story that extrapolate the story out a bit and you get to see some of the ramifications of this story that are really sticking with me.
As for the story itself? It was good. I really liked Bora Horza Gobuchul. I thought he was a great protagonist to follow, especially with how much he seemed to hate the Culture. This series is called the Culture, yet the first book is following someone who is highly critical of it.
This is where we might ask, what is the Culture? Well if you know Star Trek, it's basically the Federation. Except where the TV show kept it pretty clean, this series is trying to show us what would this socialist paradise actually look like with real people. It would be hedonistic. There would be a lot more division among the people as we have a culture where every viewpoint is more or less valid. It's interesting, but, since I was mostly outside the Culture with this book, I feel like I just got the barest glimpse of what the Culture actually is. And also a little bit of a skewed glimpse at that.
Looking forward to checking out book 2 sometime in the near future.