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Consider Phlebas | Rating | |
| C | |||
| Iain M. Banks | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| N/A | N/A | ||
The Idirans are a race of expansionist aliens. And they're at war with the powerful human Culture. But the Culture is a peaceable entity, and it's taking a goodly while to get ramped up for conflict; in the meantime, they're taking something of a beating. Which explains why a new ship built around a new and Mind needed to flee into what is known as a Planet of the Dead. The Iridans want the powerful AI for their own purposes, and have sent Bora Horza Gobuchul to retrieve it. The Culture, however, has sent Perosteck Balveda to rescue it. But neither is going to have an easy time getting onto the planet — or even getting to it!
Consider Phlebas suffers significantly from a decided lack of exposition. Many major questions go unanswered, mostly regarding the status of humanity. For example, Horza can change shape to a limited degree, but he is called at varying times either human or Changer. Is this another species, a subspecies, a mutation, a created race... what? What this means is left up in the air.
So, too, is humanity's role in this war left a bit fuzzy. Horza is working for the Iderans, other humans for the Culture. Is Horza a slave, then, a conquered segment of humanity? A traitor? A mercenary? Or is all of humanity conquered, and those working for the Culture refugees? Pehaps humans are a neutral third party. I just didn't know until well into the book how things lay, and I didn't like that at all.
Each of these problems amplifies and exacerbates the other. Understanding the status of the human species as a whole would have helped in understanding their role in the war, and vice versa. Explanations do come, but much too far in — it's nearly a hundred pages before the fog begins to lift, and it's a hundred-fifty pages before it's really clear. And much too fast, as well. Blink at the wrong time, skim over the wrong paragraph, and you'll miss them. A more in-depth piece of exposition placed much earlier would have been much appreciated. As it was, I felt rather lost for the first quarter of the book.
I was also less than pleased with the characters themselves, for that matter. Horza is not an especially nice person. He kills innocents (or at least beings he didn't have to kill) several times — not a good way to win me over, at least not for the good guy. Some characters are likeable enough to get away with being nasty at times, coming across as a classic rogue or at worst someone who is just doing what he must, however distasteful. Horza doesn't, though. He seems to be simply an ugly soul, without much conscience or remorse.
The back cover of this novel calls Consider Phlebas a great space opera, but I have to disagree to both labels. It felt more akin to that collaboration between Speilberg and Kubrik, AI, hard and ver gritty science fiction with some soft edges added in here and there. But I wasn't too fond of that movie, and I feel the same thing here. This story could be considered good, even great by the right people, but for me the more I read the less it appealed. At least this book had a better ending than AI, anyway.
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