Monica read and liked Manny's review of The Player of Games:

"In 1938, Yasunari Kawabata, a future Nobel Prize winner, was assigned by the Mainichi newspaper to cover a Go match between Honinbo Shusai, the top player, and his challenger Kitani Minoru. Go has an importance in Japanese culture that is hard for a ...more In 1938, Yasunari Kawabata, a future Nobel Prize winner, was assigned by the Mainichi newspaper to cover a Go match between Honinbo Shusai, the top player, and his challenger Kitani Minoru. Go has an importance in Japanese culture that is hard for a Westerner to understand, and was one of the four traditional arts that a Samurai had to excel in. The match was very even until Kitani played an unexpected move just before an adjournment; its only purpose was to force a response, giving him extra time to think about his next play. This is completely standard practice in chess, but, although permitted by the rules of Go, was contrary to the complicated etiquette of the game. Shusai was shocked and immediately blundered, deciding the outcome. He lost, and died not long after. Kawabata saw Kitani's adoption of Western pragmatism as a symbolic defeat of Japanese culture, presaging its concrete military defeat in the Second World War. He rewrote his newspaper columns from the match as the novel Meijin ("The Master of Go"), and considered it his finest work.

The Player of Games is a kind of SF reimagining of Kawabata's masterpiece, set inside the universe of Iain M. Bank's Culture series (see Consider Phlebas for general background). The Culture is becoming increasingly concerned about the Azad, a civilization out on the edges of the Galaxy, where life is dominated by a strange game which determines all wealth and status. One of the things I like about the Culture is its moral ambiguity. They first come across as a bunch of laid-back, peace-loving hippies, but in fact they are ready to fight at any moment, using whatever weapons they find most appropriate. Sometime, those weapons are anti-matter bombs capable of destroying a solar system. Here, they are planning a devious psychological destabilization maneuver, which is in fact no less deadly.

The Culture's leading game player, Gurgeh, is tricked and coerced into taking the long trip out to Azad, mastering the game en route, and planning to challenge them where their defenses are weakest and their pride most vulnerable: he will take part in the yearly elimination tournament, and destroy their self-belief by demonstrating that they can be beaten by an outsider. The game is well conceived, and, speaking as someone who plays both chess and Go seriously, the playing scenes ring true. It is not unreasonable to compare with the Go passages in Kawabata's book, or the chess in Nabokov's novel Luzhin's Defence. I also liked the alien Azad race. Among other things, they have three genders, a fact which is used in an interesting way to highlight the cruel and corrupt nature of their society. Banks manages simultaneously to appall you with the Culture's cold-blooded plan to destroy the Azad psychologically, and to show why they feel the scheme is necessary. As usual in this series, there are no good guys: the best you can hope for is to choose the lesser evil.

The writing is pleasant, the plot is complex and interesting, and the ending is suitably apocalyptic. If you like games and SF, I can't imagine you not enjoying this book. Even if you're only one out of two, I strongly recommend it.
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Monica read and liked Rachel's review of Michelangelo's Notebook:

"Boobies boobies boobies dead body dead body boobies dead body boobies boobies.

There, I just summed up the fist 100 or so pages for you. Moving on...

Basically this book follows Dan Brown's formula of attractive hero/heroine + ...more Boobies boobies boobies dead body dead body boobies dead body boobies boobies.

There, I just summed up the fist 100 or so pages for you. Moving on...

Basically this book follows Dan Brown's formula of attractive hero/heroine + art mystery = $$$. Except this is an even lamer version of Dan Brown. As a matter of fact, a character in this book even comments on page 304 (of my copy at least) that this is "getting into Dan Brown territory" or some variation of that quote.

Which makes me wonder, first Brown wrote about a famous artist, and then went even further into religion with Angels and Demons. And Mr. Christopher's next book with Finn is titled The Lucifer Gospel...sounds like we're delving even more into religion! The parallels are uncanny!!!

In addition to this, well let's say there's "descriptive" and then there's "beating a dead horse". I would read pages and pages and forget what the heck the point was.

Add in little annoyances like the fire escape that led up to the roof (because in case a building's on fire, boy howdy I know I wanna climb to the roof!) and an object clicking "decisively to a stop like a cork in a bottle" (I always thought corks in bottles made "pop" or "poomp" sounds, but maybe I'm crazy, maybe they click and I just hear what I want)...*sighs* the lameness of this book doesn't even deserve my sarcasm.

That's about five hours of my life I'll never get back.(less) "