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An action-packed galactic space war by a literary author who thinks very highly of his SF.
Orbit, 1987, 429 pages
( Pretty much what it says on the tin. A well-written space opera is still just a space opera )
Verdict: Smarter space opera for people who love space opera. If you like old-school SF with the big ships and space battles and aliens and robots as secondary characters, Consider Phlebas should fit the bill, and Iain M. Banks wins awards because he writes non-SF and he can write real good. But if you are not particularly fanboyish/girlish about space opera, this book probably won't win you over, because underneath that space opera exterior it's space opera through and through. This isn't a bold new revolution in SF, nor was it when it was first published; it's just a high-quality exemplar of its class, with tons of tension and pacing and careful, precise prose and nothing truly original or genre-shaking.
My complete list of book reviews.
Orbit, 1987, 429 pages
The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.
Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.
( Pretty much what it says on the tin. A well-written space opera is still just a space opera )
Verdict: Smarter space opera for people who love space opera. If you like old-school SF with the big ships and space battles and aliens and robots as secondary characters, Consider Phlebas should fit the bill, and Iain M. Banks wins awards because he writes non-SF and he can write real good. But if you are not particularly fanboyish/girlish about space opera, this book probably won't win you over, because underneath that space opera exterior it's space opera through and through. This isn't a bold new revolution in SF, nor was it when it was first published; it's just a high-quality exemplar of its class, with tons of tension and pacing and careful, precise prose and nothing truly original or genre-shaking.
My complete list of book reviews.
