✍️ Written by: Ian M. Banks
🏷️ Genre: Sci-Fi
🗓️ Published: 08 September 2008
📄 Pages: 545
🧐 My rating: ★★★★☆ (4 stars)
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, to actually find it - and with it their own destruction.
Consider Phlebas is the first book in the Banks' Culture series. I found it incredibly enjoyable - the story is well written and Banks has a real talent for world building.
I quickly warmed to the characters and found myself invested in the story, which is a sure sign of a great read. I was speaking to a friend about this book recently - he actually recommended this to me originally - and he mentioned that books 2 and 3 are even better, so looking forward to getting into those.
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