Consider Phlebas: Booktrack Edition

By: Iain M. Banks

Narrated by: Peter Kenny

Length: 16 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

Consider Phlebas: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience!

The first audiobook in Iain M. Banks's seminal science fiction series, The Culture. Consider Phlebas introduces listeners to the utopian conglomeration of human and alien races that explores the nature of war, morality, and the limitless bounds of mankind's imagination.

The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.

Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.

Booktrack is an immersive format that pairs traditional audiobook narration to complementary music. The tempo and rhythm of the score are in perfect harmony with the action and characters throughout the audiobook. Gently playing in the background, the music never overpowers or distracts from the narration, so listeners can enjoy every minute. When you purchase this Booktrack edition, you receive the exact narration as the traditional audiobook available, with the addition of music throughout.

©2009 Iain M. Banks (P)2020 Orbit

Booktrack adds immersion with headphones

This review is merely to address the added background music, playing throughout the reading. With headphones it plays wonderfully alongside the read. I recommend the headphone experience. As for those claiming it was “too loud”, or “too distracting”- I found those claims ludicrous in my experience. Great addition to audiobooks.

Excellent, except soundtrack

Excellent book, excellent performance even if some of these bad-ass characters sometimes sounded a little too polite-english for my taste! :)

The "soundtrack" is just ambient music, very rarely with some actual sound effects vaguely related to the action. Slightly false advertising. It sometimes adds to the experience, sometimes detracts. I wished to be able to switch to the plain narration at times to stay more immersed.

Still recommended, either version.

Yawn

Very long drawn out anti-climatic. Narrator was fine, no sound effects just music meh

Peter Kenny brings the masterpiece to life

Peter Kenny brings this space opera masterpiece to life with an inspired performance. A perfect introduction into the banks universe and introduction into the culture told from the perspective of their enemy.

Great start, then peters out

Terrific opening, tons of potential, just never quite developed into the story it could've been. A little heavy on invented words, but hangs together well enough. This could've been up there with the sprawling classics of sci-fi, but seems to have been aborted prematurely. Enjoyable all the same, with some interesting concepts and not too much manufactured drama, but dragged a little towards the middle/end.
Narration is extremely fast, found I was missing bits until I kicked it down to 80% speed, which seemed to be just right.

amazing performance! story was good but had issues

the book track is very very good! and the performance is simply wonderful! I loved the book when it was riding high it was amazing! the best parts of the tory were absolutely gripping, however, every once in awhile it goes off on a strange tangent that doesn't add anything to the story. liked it a ton, I've heard book 2 in the series "playerof games" is better and also a good way to start.

may edit this review when I finish that

Reconsider Phlebas

Good story with diverse characters. The “music” was distracting, not adding to the experience. Not sure I like a story where most characters die.

This Reminds Me of Tekken But Sci-Fi

This novel has some cool Sci-Fi ideas that would become a lot more commonplace in the years since it's writing, but first and foremost it's kind of an action novel about a whole bunch of not particularly nice or _good_ people that make a relatable snapshot of various aspects of humanity. I found myself surprised many times at who I was cheering for or what I was hoping would happen and ultimately had a great time touring around all the places.

The ending kinda sucks unfortunately. I don't remember the last time I felt so attacked at the end of an otherwise solid book.

The background music and sound effects on this particular version of the audiobook were unobtrusive and did help with the atmosphere. Though I read this over the course of two or three weeks. The bgm might be more grating in a
longer listening sessions.

I enjoyed my start with the Culture series and I look forward to reading the rest soon.

A True galactic feel

This is one of but a few books that really brings home the feeling of scale that a galactic war in my opinion would have.
It is impersonal, it is vast and the story just melts away so fast to be lost in the infinity.

Great setup but just shy of a classic.

loved the world building and characters. the plot has lots of great hooks and surprises but sadly fails to capitalize on them in the end. A fun read just to be in the world. fantastic performance by the reader and the music really adds to the mood