["Consider Phlebas"]

[fiefoe]

Iain Banks has been on my to-read list for a long time. Though his "Raw Spirit", a meandering account of his quest for the perfect dram of single malt whiskey, was only sporadically entertaining, he still warranted a second look.

But a quarter way into the book, the jury is still out. Part of the problem for me is its scale. The backdrop, an intergalactic war that results in 6 stars 'undergoing significant induced mass-loss or sequence-position alteration', is too vast. In contrast, the protagonist Horza is constantly mired in trivial struggle for personal survival - hand-to-hand combat, broken comm-link on the antique armour suit won from said combat... Switching perspectives induces vertigo.

The Culture is an admirable construct, but there seems little joy in that universe. Maybe I'm being unfair - tenderness is usually not on the menu with a space opera.