Your Move
Continuing my long and successful plan of being the last person to read things, I recently read another Culture novel by Iain Banks, The Player of Games. This might be my favorite book of his I’ve read and it’s largely because I could understand the central character’s motive, being a game player myself, though on a much smaller scale.
In brief, a champion game player is recruited by a faction within his society to go play a very difficult game with very high stakes and with lots of shenanigans to keep it from getting dull. The narrative does a good job of raising the stakes and having a rewarding payoff. Pacing is brisk, the characters are convincingly detailed, and it’s a solid, though somewhat predictable, story.
Things I liked about it
- Central focus on games and the kind of thinking which goes into playing them
- Larger than life sweep of events, with a rich futuristic flavor to the setting
- Devious gambits and duplicity revealed
Things I didn’t like about it
- The final reveal felt too pat to me
- Some of the most dramatic events happened outside the scope of narrative
Who might like this book
- Fans of space opera
- Fans of the experience of playing games
Who might not like this book
- No idea. I suppose such people much exist but I didn’t notice anything offensive here.
Tags: culture, novel, Review, space opera
