• The Player of Games

  • By: Iain M. Banks
  • Narrated by: Peter Kenny
  • Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (4,360 ratings)

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The Player of Games  By  cover art

The Player of Games

By: Iain M. Banks
Narrated by: Peter Kenny
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Publisher's summary

The Culture - a human/machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is Gurgeh. Jernau Morat Gurgeh. The Player of Games. Master of every board, computer, and strategy. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game... a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh accepts the game, and with it the challenge of his life - and very possibly his death.

©2008 Iain M. Banks (P)2011 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"Poetic, humorous, baffling, terrifying, sexy - the books of Iain M. Banks are all these things and more." ( NME)
"An exquisitely riotous tour de force of the imagination which writes its own rules simply for the pleasure of breaking them." ( Time Out)

What listeners say about The Player of Games

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Guy Play's Game

The story had substance, but the premise was a little cheesy and anticlimactic. The story is slow and boring for 3/4 and the last 1/4 is fast and short. story is heavily focused on the title subject, at the cost of content on the games being played.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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I wish we were there

A great story. Lately I became tired of the 'kill the evil superior technologically aliens with our low technology but right to exist and propagate in our primitive ways values' kind of science fiction. So I tried to find something of a different kind. And this is just what I was looking for. There is just a tiny obligatory overtone of the above theme. Well developed story. Narration is also excellent.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Philosophical clash of paradigms and epistomology

This book was intense. The plot is thick and the characters are deep. The intellectual flexibility of the authors concepts are intriguing in both subtle and direct ways. If you like analyzing the underpinnings of cultures and how the worldviews of those cultures shape the reality they observe, this book takes a look at that in the concept of a game. The main character has to play a game that is more complicated than any game anyone has ever played on a remote planet and civilization. The game is so large scaled and complicated that the philosophies and subconscious motivations of the players manifest accurately onto the positions on the board. If a capitalist plays the game, the board takes on the garb of a capitalist structure and so on with other modalities. The philosophical intrigue of the book combined with the liveliness of the characters makes it a strong science fiction title. There are some adult themes in it, though none are direct. I'm looking forward to reading more novels in the same universe.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent! Another Culture gem.

Where does The Player of Games rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

One of the best Si/Fi stories yet.

Who was your favorite character and why?

The little drone. Flir Imsol.

Have you listened to any of Peter Kenny’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Yes, equally well done, love his reading of the Culture series.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The good vs evil concept.

Any additional comments?

The most creative and innovative authors in his genere.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Bad Robots and the Humans that use them

There is a lot of to unpack in this story, and if you stick it out you won't be disappointed. You probably won't be happy, but you don't read long form scifi for happy. That's what YA is for.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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my opinion best of the culture

I love everything about this book, with the possible exception of its similarity to Hesse's Glass Bead Game. Or maybe that makes it better. Not sure.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A great book

Any additional comments?

I would strongly suggest reading the series from start to finish. This one, however, is one of the highlights on the journey. Masterfully crafted. Beautifully written. Wonderful characters. Cutting social commentary. Brutally honest.

RIP Mr. Banks. This book has made you immortal.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Great story, superbly narrated

The second book of the Culture series tells the story of a serious game player (think board games, card games, etc.) who is manipulated into traveling across the Galaxy to participate in a tournament where the winner becomes Emperor of an alien civilization.

The Culture is a vast, technically advanced civilization where great machine minds keep most of the human populace living in liberty and high luxury. With all their needs provided for, the people of the Culture spend a great deal of their time in research, art, and recreation. However, a small number join "Contact," the Culture organization responsible for engaging with other civilizations and trying to peacefully share the Culture's values with them. Occasionally, Contact encounters a civilization which is either dangerously hostile or so backwards that direct engagement with the Culture could be calamitous for their less advanced neighbors. These are "Special Circumstances," and the SC group handles them.

The Azadians are indeed a backward civilization by the Culture's standards; aggressive, repressive, brutal imperialists subjugating every world they encounter. But their Empire is ordered according to the intricately complicated game of Azad. Hence SC decides the best approach might be to send in one of their top gamers... Only in the Culture, no one can be forced to do anything, and their best candidate doesn't seem to be interested.

Peter Kenny does a fantastic job voicing the characters and smoothly moving the story along.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Great intro to Iain Banks' Culture novels

This was recommended to me as a good starting point into Banks' Culture novels (although technically its book #2) and I enjoyed it immensely.

The narration was fantastic, read at a fairly fast pace but not hard to follow. Kenny adjusts his voice in subtle ways to suggest different people, but does not treat it like an audio play. It felt like a book being expertly read to me. While I have recently grown to appreciate other narration styles, this is just the kind of experience I originally joined Audible for.

I'm disappointed to see that not all of the Culture books are available on Audible, but I'll listen to the ones I can, particularly if they are narrated by Peter Kenny.

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Fascinating alien philosophies clash

I loved Banks' terrific extrapolations of philosophies & technologies into believable societies. It had the right balance of action and slower, thought-intensive scenes that one would expect in the mind of a professional gamer, such as the protagonist. I do find the omnipotence of The Culture to be a detraction here, as the stakes don't seem to rise very high; there is an unexciting feeling of invulnerability that might be better left in some doubt. I also really enjoyed the ending twists, although many were unguessable due to the 'silver bullet' SF tropes employed.

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