• The Player of Games

  • By: Iain M. Banks
  • Narrated by: Peter Kenny
  • Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (4,384 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

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
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  • Overall
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Culture at its finest

Great definition by comparison between the Culture v. Despotism rule and life. Actually applicable to today in our divided society. Puts forward an outcome of underestimating a preference for peace and education with the will +ability to back that up vs the stepping off first with force and aggression ruled along rigid artificially created lines of fear, disinformation, and differentiation.

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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

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Essential Iain M. Banks

A great addition to the culture series. Good vocal performance and an amazing story. A must for sci fi fans.

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

Great story awesome presentation!

I'm new to banks and was looking for something to quench my science fiction/space opera thirst after
reading all of my favorite authors books from Alistar Reynolds. Banks hits a home run with his own style scoring a top position as one of my new favorite authors!!!!!

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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Narrator on Fast Forward

I enjoyed this story greatly. The only drawback was the narrator. Was the man mainline Nguyen 5Hour Energy or what? I kept checking to see if the speed was right. It was. He just read like he had to be someplace in the next five minutes.

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really good!

it started off slow, but it really picked up and I really enjoyed it! I'm sure I'll listen again!

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    5 out of 5 stars
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A fabulous story full of bright characters!

This is one of the best novels I've read in awhile, the characters are vivid and leap off the page. Having finished the book I am saddened like the lead character that it is over - I will miss them! A delightful sci-fi romp and thinly veiled social commentary taking a look into a potential human society of the future where machines and man coexist as join minds for the greater society - in this episode we see a man manipulated into serving his society in a particularly fun and interesting way. A good read indeed!

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

Interesting but could have been so much more

The story itself was a very good story. It could have been so much better had the author dug deeper and drawn closer parallels between earth and the world in the book.
What a fascinating idea, if a higher if intelligence aliens came to observe humans and all our barbaric ways.
Sadly the story starts down that path but then the parallels break and their ceases to be a correlation.
It's just a well written sci-fi after that...nothing to put on must read list though.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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captivating

wonderful captivating story can't wait to leave for listen to the rest the culture series

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fightingblindness.org

can you see me now?
raising the bar to sex G
in fidelity vs wireless fidelity

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