Consider Phlebas

Culture Series, Book 1

By: Iain M. Banks

Narrated by: Peter Kenny

Length: 16 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

The novels of Iain M. Banks have forever changed the face of modern science fiction. His Culture books combine breathtaking imagination with exceptional storytelling, and have secured his reputation as one of the most extraordinary and influential writers in the genre.
War rages across the galaxy. Billions have died, billions more are doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, face cold-blooded, brutal destruction. The Idirans ­fight for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles are at stake. There can be no surrender.

Within this cosmic conflict, a crucial battle of wits is waged. Deep within a fabled labyrinth, on a Planet of the Dead forbidden to mortals, lies a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans desperately seek it. It is the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, to actually ­find it - and with it their own destruction.

The Culture series:
Consider Phlebas
The Player of Games
Use of Weapons
Excession
Inversions
Look to Windward
Matter
Surface Detail
The Hydrogen Sonata
The State of the Art

Other books by Iain M. Banks:
Against a Dark Background
Feersum Endjinn
The Algebraist

©1987 Iain M. Banks (P)2010 Hachette Digital

Critic reviews

'Banks is a phenomenon' William Gibson

Fantastic narrative but shallow plot

He has a fantastic way of paining the environment in vivid ways and with surprising detail. The plot however feels shallow in the big picture and leaves you feeling less than satisfied.

A brilliant book if ever there was one.

Breathtaking story set in an expansive, incredibly diverse and well-designed universe. Strong, well fleshed-out characters one really begins to care about. An intelligent, beautifully written story that reads more like poetry than prose. Wonderfully narrated, with each character having a consistent, distinct voice and the right intonation for every situation. What's not to love about this performance! Downloaded the second book in the series before the first one was even finished.

Worth Reading, but not much more

All in all the world was rich and interesting and the book touched on topics both philosophical, political, esoteric and very human. Absolutely worth a read, but not much more. Hence I rate it 3/5.

The book was a bit indulgent with the worldbuilding/exposition at the cost of character and plot. Some parts were a bit too much spectacle for the sake of spectacle (or just a thought experiment the author really wanted to put in somewhere) and did only marginally contribute to the overall narrative/theme.

The narrator was great and absolutely enhanced the experience.

Culture Book 1 - Not a classic but a solid effort

What did you love best about Consider Phlebas?

The unassuming pace is interesting like listening to a day dream

Who was your favorite character and why?

Horza does kind of grow on you as the tough secret agent persona wears away. None of the characters are easy to like. And the ones that do... well...

What about Peter Kenny’s performance did you like?

Passable attempt at alien voices. The mapping of an unknown alien voice to known earth accent is always a tough one like why do French slum dwellers inherit a cockney accent in Les Miserables. Why do Culture supercomputers get the sound of a pompous nineteenth century English fop?

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No. the slower patches are pleasant and necessary but do not engender a sprint read

Any additional comments?

This story is more than the sum of its parts.
The after taste is interesting and since it is part of a loose series it is enough to hit the buy now button a couple more times.

Boring start but picked up pace

Didn't care much for how the book started but it got better. Main characters motivation felt really strange and some decisions were weird but cool world building

Routes of The Culture

A good listen. All the technological depth and character development you could want in a sci-fi novel. If you like "Ring World" or "The Mote In God's Eye", you'll probably like this more.
Only four stars out of five because it mainly lacks the humour of his later books. "Matter" (by the same author) was just brilliant!

Though this is Iain M Banks' first sci-fi novel, it is a 2010 audio production.
Once again, Peter Kenny excels as narrator.

Recommended

Pretty dang good. Narrator is great. Space communism is funny. Religious fanatics always cause trouble

Very good narration / Excellent Story to a point

First two thirds brilliant, then goes off the rails ending too abruptly leaving reader unfulfilled.

Classic, intelligent sciFi

Read this years ago: an absolute classic of sciFi. The novel works on many levels - as a story line, as a set of believable characters, and as a created world of its own. The sciFi environment which envelops the characters is convincing and deeply thought through - right down to the subtlety of the relationship between humans and the highly evolved AI computer systems who jointly form the 'Culture'. The novel is told through the character of an enemy of the Culture, again a thoroughly thought through interpretation of how a genetically modified species might interact with other species and cultures. Mostly though, the sciFi world created is convincing enough to allow the reader just to enjoy the battle of wits between the two principal characters.

Some of the scenes in the book are reflective of the extremities of behaviour which might be expected by extrapolating extreme character traits over immense populations, and I must confess I found them a bit strong - but they do contribute to the depth of characterisation and the sense of urgency in the story line.

The performance from Peter Kenny is well paced and compelling - to quote Jerry Pournelle in the golden days of Byte magazine - 'recommended'.

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I keep coming back to this one. every time I finish it I mourn the loss of Ian Banks.