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Summary: Iain Banks is why I still read SF.
Review: This book was great. It is my favorite to date, but I admit that I have not read everything Banks has written. The Culture books are my favorite. The Culture Universe is what draws me to these books again and again. Someone should make a movie or computer game out of this whole Culture idea. I can't recommend these books enough to anyone who loves SF, or anyone else. You won't be dissappointed.
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Summary: The most deceptively enjoyable book I've ever read.
Review: Never known how Banks ever thought he could turn an idea like this into a book that people would read. And yet it is without doubt one of my favourites of his. Bizarre, but amazing.
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Summary: My favorite Banks novel
Review: Bitter, twisted, peverse and superb. I've read everything Banks has written, both with and without the middle initial (the "M" labels his science-fiction books), and this is my favorite. All the M books are really good except "Feersum Enjinn" and "State of the Art". Banks is bravely experimental enough that not all his books hit the mark. This one does.
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Summary: Great but seriously over-rated
Review: First of all, this IS a very good novel. Funny, devastating, clever and satirical - I'd happily recommend it to anyone.However, I'm of the opinion that Banks is something of a genius in when in top form. He's not in top form here. The satire is obvious and, although accurate and amusing, has something of a sledgehammer-like quality. It is funny but so are all of his novels bar A Song of Stone, and this is not in the same league as Excession for humour. It's also shocking at times but, again, so are most of his novels. The Player of Games can't however match the characters and plots of his best works. There are many better books by Banks: 'non-genre' (who first came up with this ridiculous description?!) novels in the shape of The Bridge, Complicity and The Wasp Factory, and sci-fi such as Consider Phlebas, Excession (frustratingly under-rated) and the incomparable Use of Weapons. Read these first!
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Summary: Spell-binding!
Review: 'Player of Games' was the first Iain 'M' Banks novel I have read, and I have to admit I loved it! Having read all his previous fiction novels, I was a little uncertain as to how much I would enjoy a SF Novel. Thankfully, all my fears were unfounded only a few pages in to the book. The main character Gurgeh is intelligent, complex and sexy. SF is a genre I never thought I would click with, but the freedom of living through the Culture, and the Empire of Azad was a liberating experience. I loved the dark webs of intrigue which connected many of the central characters, and the reality of this 'universe' was all too addictive. I have since read 'Consider Phlebus', and I enjoyed it just as much if not more. I can honestly say, Iain Banks, with or without the M, is one of the best writers of all time!
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Summary: Disappointed
Review: I truly loved "Consider Phlebas" and am currently loving "The Use of Weapons" so I feel hard pressed to give this book 3 stars but it deserves it. The book was centered around a game of strategy that takes up a good 3rd of the book which Banks barely manages to scrape the surface. If Banks wants to make a point he needs to involve the reader in exactly what the main character is thinking and give an idea of what "he did better that day means" exactly. I realize that the idea of the book was not the Game but the events surrounding it but it was still part of the book and that does not excuse it from being so poorly developed.
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Summary: Chilling, inspiring, magestic......
Review: Banks creates something really special here.... Every time I read this book I'm brought back to when I read it first.... the same chill down my spine from the ending revelation.... Check it out!!!!!
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Summary: Banks near the apex of his talents
Review: Despite the brutality of the Empire which Banks creates in The Player of Games, this is a more mellow story than its predecessor, Consider Phlebas. The Empire is clearly the author's foray into the Roman Empire, examining the success of its ruthless control over its subjects, the justifications of its leaders for doing so and the inevitability that empires, including the egalitarian Culture, must crumble. The brilliant vein in The Player of Games is Banks' believable creation of a third gender, the apex. This surely took guts to tackle; a sex which controls the species by receiving the seed from the male and passing it on to the female (although the arrogance of the apex proved to be blind to the female's DNA input to the offspring). By creating a third, dominant sex, Banks has been able to portray the everyday inequity of power of the male over the female of our own human species without taking sides in the eternal war of the sexes. In another novel in which Banks enthralls with his scope of imagination of man-made planets (Orbitals) and spaceships of awesome size and intelligence, his breadth of imagination in painting the weaknesses in the human condition is just as powerful.
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Summary: Iain M. Banks is getting reviewed here
Review: I have decided that I love Banks. The only thing that makes me squirm in his books, ever, is his insistence on giving the main character a flaw that always strikes me as inconsequential, and demeaning to the story. If he has a fondness for a planned society, or harbors sympathy for a "socialist" economy, he has my deepest regrets. The day will come when everyone is so wealthy that money won't matter any more. But we won't get there by "redistributing" wealth. I loved The Player of Games, from the first page to the very last. The only book I've liked better is Fearsum Enjinn, however startling the dyslexic narrator happened to be.
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Summary: Totally captivating, great ending, good hard sci-fi w/ more!
Review: Really captured the ego of a gamesplayer, tied up in a hard sci-fi bow and a totally captivating pace and the ending was very exciting. As a chess player I was sucked into the psychology of the "total-game" around which the story builds to a climax. A very absorbing read!
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