The Player Of Games: A Culture Novel

The concept here is of a game so all encompassing it is the very foundation of a complete empire. Their lives are dictated by it. Political views, belief systems, military tactics, alliances and control of resources are all core elements of the 'game'. It's a clever way of making you think about a much, much larger picture through the metaphor of Azad. Certainly an interesting read.

This story is on the one hand an introspective look at a society only slightly worse than our own (One hopes) using the readers knowledge of the Culture as a lens but at the same time it also allows the reader to examine the finer points of the fictional Culture using the lens of the oh-so-similar-to-us Azad Empire. IMHO this renders the feel of the Culture much more tangible as this is one of the few places where the Culture is assigned a tangible human-comprehensible structure, even if it is in the content of a game, to me it makes it feel more real and relatable-to. Other reviewers have suggested that the beginning is slow and difficult to get through, whereas I found it full of interesting scene-setting detail, giving us a flavour of the protagonist (Though not the narrator) so that (In my case at least) we only partially connect with him emotionally as he is a flawed and difficult-to-like sort, that grows through victory and trauma as we progress through the book. In the end I found myself finding catharsis in the context of the events of the world rather than through empathy with the protagonist and I feel the story is stronger for it.

After reading Consider Phlebas this is another interesting dive into the future of humanity when all the big problems have been solved. The 'Empire' provides an excellent counterpoint with it's crude brutality and a good few close-to-home similarities with the darker parts of human nature.