SF first published in 1987. It's Space Opera with much fighting and chases. There were long sections that I struggled to get through.
Horza, a Changer, is caught up in a war involving the Culture and the three-legged Idirians. A Mind hides on a planet. Basic-humans find changers revolting - "Individuality, the thing which most humans held more precious than anything else about themselves, was somehow cheapened" (p.46). "the Culture's attitude to somebody who believed in an omnipotent God was to pity them, and no take no more notice of the substance of their faith than one would take of the rantings of somebody claiming to be Emperor of the Universe" (p.157). On p.177 we hear from the Mind, which is rather dormant.
By the end, most of the characters have died. The future lives of the few survivors are described in a biographies section at the end.
Other reviews
- Illustrated page (I feel like some of this should have been cut. I particularly disliked chapter six, which was a very gross foray into cannibalism that I don’t think was at all necessary. The book also kept cutting to a woman who lived in the Culture, the AI based civilization. She was not at all related to the plot and never interacted with any of the other characters, so I guess her sole purpose was to illuminate the theme of the novel by reflecting on the war? I don’t think her chapters were necessary, and it would have made for a tighter novel if Banks had found some way to weave her observations into the main story thread. ... overall Consider Phlebas just felt dull. )
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