Ehhhhhh.I really expected to like this more than I did, and at times I did find myself enjoying it. I liked several of the characters quite a bit, but others never felt fully formed or even interesting. I think I mainly just found it...tedious, a lot of the time. Too much filler. And this is maybe kind of dumb, but it bothered me that Horza escapes death sooooo many times, and in such unlikely ways. It strained credulity. Anyway, I might give Banks another try at some point, but I'm not terribly interested in reading the second Culture book. Epic space opera following the war between the machine like “Culture” and the Idirans, war-loving tripedal creatures not a million miles unlike Islamists. Horza is a changer, a man that can change his appearance, working as an agent for the Idirans, who we catch up with being slowly suffocated in a sewerage cistern. After this he joins space pirates, is blown off a mega-ship rotating around a rotating man made torus in space after the ship hits an iceberg, gets involved in a deadly card game in a restaurant at the end of the universe, has his toes eaten off by a deadly fanatic stranded on a desert island, and finally searches for a mssing computer-mind in a subterranean nuclear shelter under a planetary bathosphere. It all ends in tears I'm afraid.
Do You like book Consider Phlebas (1987)?
Couldn't put it down. Fast pace and excellent story, looking forward to more of the culture series.
—pirania
5 stars for the ending and the flawed Horza character.
—Jasmine
Non mi è piaciuto, una fatica finirlo...
—BobbieJo
