THE PLAYER OF GAMES: finished reading (*contains spoilers*)

[Stefan, Group Founder + Moderator (Retired)]

Here's a topic for people who are finished with The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks.

Careful - may contain spoilers!

[Brennan]

I read this one a long time ago. I think Iain Banks is one of my favorite authors, although this would not be the work that put him in those ranks. It falls squarely in the middle for me. Surface Detail, Matter, and the Algebraist would have to be the top books in his bibliography, and are also some of the most recent ones. I think he really hit his stride a few years ago.

[Hélène]

I like it well enough but felt a bit frustrated by the way Banks holds the characters at arms length. As it is the first book of him I read I don't know if it's his usual manner or if it's a once choice. I find that choosing to narrate the whole thing through the drone is somewhat limiting. I remember thinking any of the Vorkosigans would have thought 10 different theories to explain the circumstances when Gurgeh/the drone offered none ! That he couldn't think the whole situation as the Game earlier feels unrealistic.
As an aside, I really appreciated the bit about the Weltanschauung. It would be great if a switch in languages were enough to make people reassess their behavior !

[mark]

i read this one a while back and enjoyed it. well more than enjoyed it, i thought it was excellent. there is something more stark and stripped down about it - especially when thinking of it in comparison to other Culture novels. it is less wide-screen, more....i don't know...metaphorical, maybe? a metaphorical play on gender politics, oppression, maybe even colonial attitudes and consumer culture.

[Chessa]

I read this last month when I saw it was coming up here in the queue. It was the first I've read of Banks, and I have to say that I pretty much loved it. I'm a big fan of utopia/dystopia stories, and this had that in spades, with the comparison of The Culture and Azad. I thought it had it's slow moving points, but overall I was thoroughly entertained. I found it interesting that it could actually be boring in a post-scarcity utopia like The Culture - Gurgeh had played all the games to play and was pretty much adrift. Weird that it took going somewhere rife with inequality but so full of humanlike passion (and vice) to jerk him out of his stupor.

And I loved that dang drone (can't remember the exact terminology) that haunted him throughout the story in various forms. ;)

I'm looking forward to reading more Culture novels.

[Nick]

The boredom in a post-scarcity utopia actually made me think of the high societies of Edith Wharton and Henry James -- novels about people who have absolutely no responsibilities. That, in itself, gives the story an air of gothicism -- the "innocent" one surrounded by the threat of some dark thing encroaching upon its life of privilege. Chessa says that Gurgeh was "jerked out of his stupor" when faced with the dark and passionate society of Azad -- Azad was the gothic beast at the door threatening his way of life, adrift as it was.

[mark]

that is a fascinating perspective, nick. i hadn't considered any kind of parallel with wharton or james or the gothic novel previously. interesting, very interesting!

[Stefan, Group Founder + Moderator (Retired)]

Nice point, Nick. It's been a while since I reread it, but Michael Moorcock's Dancers at the Edge of Time kinda pulled those two strands (high society/far future) together.

[Lurple]

Never read a Banks book before. I thought this one was pretty good; not great, but good enough to convince me to try some of his other work. It didn't really leave a lasting impression, but the author works in enough information on The Culture to make the book able to standalone without reading any others.

And I agree with Chessa, the rude drone was probably the best character in the book. Too bad it didn't have more dialog.

[Marty]

i didn't enjoy the characters enough to really get involved with this book.

[Kathi, Moderator & Book Lover]

I finally finished this last night. I really liked it, better than the first Culture book I read (Consider Phlebas). I was intrigued by Gurgeh although I never really felt like I got to know him, and I enjoyed Flere-Imsaho (and did not suspect until rather near the end that he was Mawhrin-Ske. I kept wondering how long it had been in the planning to have Gurgeh go to the Empire and play Azad. One scene that sticks in my head is near the climax when the Emperor is placing his cards on the final table and the palace is being destroyed in concert with the cards being played.

[Stefan, Group Founder + Moderator (Retired)]

I'm so glad you finished this one, Kathi. It's one of my favorite SF novels. If you liked this one, definitely check out the next book, Use of Weapons, which may be Banks' crowning achievement. I really need to re-read all of these.

[Paul]

Stefan wrote: "I'm so glad you finished this one, Kathi. It's one of my favorite SF novels. If you liked this one, definitely check out the next book, Use of Weapons, which may be Banks' crowning a..."

i'd agree to check out Use of Weapons; it was for some years my favourite Banks book, although I personally think that Look To Windward is even better.

you can definitely see Banks' big themes building in TPoG; obviously the Culture is partly a reference to those of us living comfortable Western lives. The values held (peace, democracy, tolerance) and superior values, regardless of any cultural (as it were) sensitivity to other societies. While I think Banks is far less critical of the Culture here than in some of the later books (as the Azad society is obviously so vile and corrupt it's something of a mustachio'd villain), I do see it as part of the dialogue that runs throughout the whole series, about to what extent one set of values is superior to another, and whether one society has a right to intervene in another, whether it is to 'help' that society or for it's own protection.

Banks also has a tendency to have a genuinely unlikable character at the forefront - Gurgeh is a self-centred, egotistical arse and in Use of Weapons Cheredenine Zakalwe may be one of my favourite characters in fiction but he is a sociopath - while it is the support characters that tend to be the sympathetic ones - and are often female, and Banks gets much better at writing female characters, i think.

(Stefan, i ave to admit that my memory of reading the last few chapters of Use of Weapons will stay with me always. It was a real heart-in-my-mouth moment, like when Lyra sees the silver guillotine being used in The Golden Compass. I remember the way I felt as i slowly realised just what had been going on just before some of the characters do. wow.)

[Kathi, Moderator & Book Lover]

I'm sure I'll keep reading the Culture books, as time and other books on the TBR pile permit.

[Rachel]

This was my first Culture novel, so it's especially interesting to read the perspectives of those who've read others, because at the moment I don't know what elements are Banks' style versus the style of this book's narrator. I enjoyed it - and read it quickly - but I wasn't quite so won over as some of my friends (who recommended it to me as the best book ever). I found some bits of description a little bit clunky, probably just because there was so much description (we are, after all, introduced to two very different cultures in a short time). I enjoyed Gurgeh's development, and as a linguist by training, I recognise the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (and was entertained by the idea of taking that idea and twisting it by creating a synthetic language). Definitely good enough that I'll check out some of Banks' other works.