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• I like all of Banks' books, with our without the M. This is a particularly nice book about a game player who gets to play the ultimate game, representing "humanity" in a clash with an alien culture. It ends in an unexpected way.

  5.00 out of 5

  xtien

• Who is the player,who is the pawn?The essence of the Culture is defined most clearly in this lyrical tale.Who/what are/is the culture?If you haven't yet been "contacted" this novel serves as the perfect introduction(you lucky barbarian).

  5.00 out of 5

  kryptikrayg

• Iain M Banks is the version of his name that Iain Banks uses for his sci-fi novels, and this one is set in the milieu of The Culture - a sophisticated society from the future where crime is almost unknown (it's such a social faux pas to be accompanied everywhere by a sentient drone - no one invites you to parties!), and the most intelligent beings are electronic Minds that control vast interstellar vessels.Jernau Morat Gurgeh - the game player - is bored. But when he takes up the offer to play the ultimate game, a game so engrossing that an entire empire is not only named after it, but ultimately based upon it, he finds his understanding of life and its meaning changed forever. My third reading of this extraordinary book makes me think I'd understood it even less than I thought, but does not change the enormous enjoyment of Banks' imaginative and descriptive powers. In fact, 'descriptive' is almost an insult - he displays to the nth degree that essential skill of the writer: to show, not to tell. Whether Gurgeh is safely on his home Orbital, or outwitting the game playing colleges of Ea, the reader is there alongside him. It's sort of book that lodges inside and changes the outlook. I will definitely be reading it a fourth time.

  5.00 out of 5

  Goldengrove

• Possibly the sharpest and perhaps the bleakest of Bainks' socially satirical brand of science fiction. It doesn't take too long to recognise our own culture in the nastier aspects of Azad and its cut-throat "game" that decides who rules its despotic system. Then again, the Culture itself comes out of this one looking even more morally ambiguous than ever and the protagonist isn't exactly a knight in shining armour. Some amazing scenes, characteristically bizarre elements and sharp wit, but blacker than many of the rest of the Culture novels.

  5.00 out of 5

  TimONeill

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