As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/

[The Culture] Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism

11314151719

Posts

  • SurfpossumSurfpossum A nonentity trying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered User regular
    I just finished listening to Use of Weapons and I cannot picture Zakalwe as anything besides old Steven Seagal.

    You're welcome and I'm sorry.

  • Styrofoam SammichStyrofoam Sammich WANT. normal (not weird)Registered User regular
    Surfpossum wrote: »
    I just finished listening to Use of Weapons and I cannot picture Zakalwe as anything besides old Steven Seagal.

    You're welcome and I'm sorry.

    Wow just choosing violence huh

    wq09t4opzrlc.jpg
  • SurfpossumSurfpossum A nonentity trying to preserve the anonymity he so richly deserves.Registered User regular
    Surfpossum wrote: »
    I just finished listening to Use of Weapons and I cannot picture Zakalwe as anything besides old Steven Seagal.

    You're welcome and I'm sorry.

    Wow just choosing violence huh
    This scene but with the audio replaced with stuff about the white chair, the Staberind, etc.

    https://youtu.be/3R4aILMr5F4

  • Styrofoam SammichStyrofoam Sammich WANT. normal (not weird)Registered User regular
    Zakalwe's speech about some thinking culture is soft in Seagal's voice and cadence would be pretty funny

    wq09t4opzrlc.jpg
  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    I was picturing Karl Urban as Zakalwe when I was listening to Use of Weapons.

  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    edited July 2021
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I was picturing Karl Urban as Zakalwe when I was listening to Use of Weapons.

    It really depends how you want to present the character. The Culture is all about things not being as they seem, and Zakalwe is definitely that. Dane DeHaan I think would be a totally different direction you could go that would totally work.

    Karl Urban would definitely be perfect when I picture the scene on the ship with his antiquated plasma rifle not working.

    electricitylikesme on
  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    edited July 2021
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I was picturing Karl Urban as Zakalwe when I was listening to Use of Weapons.

    It really depends how you want to present the character. The Culture is all about things not being as they seem, and Zakalwe is definitely that. Dane DeHaan I think would be a totally different direction you could go that would totally work.

    Karl Urban would definitely be perfect when I picture the scene on the ship with his antiquated plasma rifle not working.
    I had to look up a picture of DeHaan with a scraggly beard to be sure and it totally works for me.

    idjh6vx2gmxn.jpg

    I could totally picture Harry Osborn making a chair out of MJ than brainwashing himself into thinking he was Spiderman out of some sick sense of grief and guilt.

    Otherwise, yeah, Urban was who first came to mind when Zakalwe was giving his big culture speech to the leader he assassinated early in the book.

    That_Guy on
  • [Expletive deleted][Expletive deleted] The mediocre doctor NorwayRegistered User regular
    @That_Guy Maybe spoiler the second-to-last sentence, too?

    Sic transit gloria mundi.
  • TefTef Registered User regular
    Holy hell @That_Guy you need to put that stuff in spoilers dude

    help a fellow forumer meet their mental health care needs because USA healthcare sucks!

    Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better

    bit.ly/2XQM1ke
  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    ??? It's the first chapter of a 30 year old book but OK

  • [Expletive deleted][Expletive deleted] The mediocre doctor NorwayRegistered User regular
    That_Guy wrote: »
    ??? It's the first chapter of a 30 year old book but OK

    The thing we complained about is actually only revealed near the end (I think; I haven't read it in 10 years). Anyways, there are fresh faces in this thread, so better play it safe, I feel.

    Sic transit gloria mundi.
  • zagdrobzagdrob Registered User regular
    That_Guy wrote: »
    ??? It's the first chapter of a 30 year old book but OK

    The thing we complained about is actually only revealed near the end (I think; I haven't read it in 10 years). Anyways, there are fresh faces in this thread, so better play it safe, I feel.

    Yeah, those are definitely two big things only revealed late in the book in that post.

  • Dizzy DDizzy D NetherlandsRegistered User regular
    The way that Use of Weapons is so weird chronologically with its chapters, is specifically because Banks wanted that reveal at the end of the book as its climax, even though it takes place in the middle of the ongoing story.

    Steam/Origin: davydizzy
  • manwiththemachinegunmanwiththemachinegun METAL GEAR?! Registered User regular
    edited September 2021
    So my opinion of the first book, Consider Phlebas, in this series after having read 75% of it is... it's kind of shit.

    It's pretty much a shame, I was really looking forward to it after having read some of the reviews here about how innovative it was. It may be over hype, but it just didn't measure up for the following reasons:
    The overall plot is pretty middling. The party is tracking down a Culture AI which figured out how to warp into a planet out of desperation. However, it's following an anti-culture spy bumbling his way through one screw up after another. Like, that's 75% of the book.

    The mercenaries are all a pack of incompetent vultures and none of them are particularly worth caring about, as they inevitably get picked off because they're stupid. The Tleilaxu Face Danc-, I mean *cough* Horza was better... but he's not a character I was really invested in. He wasn't offensive, just not memorable.

    The author's interesting ideas such as an Organic/AI hybrid federation fighting a fundamentalist religious confederation which is none-the-less self determinant is one of the best parts of the book, so of course none of that is really followed barring a few odd passages here and there.

    Banks really goes over the border in to Junior High level shock value. A planet of literal shit eating cult which serves no purpose other than to have some torture porn wedged in with a strawman argument about the nature of religion and the Culture. It's the same thing earlier in the story where the bourgeois Culture allies try to drown the spy in the Palace's shit. Yeah I get it, they're a bunch of Harkonnen degenerates, but the way its present is utterly lacking in nuance. Yeah, it's dumb.

    Simply put, the book *felt* crass. Not slick, not revolutionary in the way I felt many talked about here. There were some somewhat interesting ideas, none of which was the focus of book, while the rest of the story revolved around a band of screw ups slowly getting killed off. I felt my time was wasted, and it's been a while since I slogged through a book this much.

    Sorry folks, I gave it a go.

    manwiththemachinegun on
  • DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    Yeah, there is a reason why folks generally suggest you start with Player of Games. Consider Phlebas is sort of a proto-Culture book and only really only about the Culture in negative, in what it opposes.

    Of course, Player of Games is sort of the same in being about the Culture by showing what it isn't, but it is a way better book in general.

    Nod. Get treat. PSN: Quippish
  • autono-wally, erotibot300autono-wally, erotibot300 love machine Registered User regular
    It's considered by some a bad starter book because (very general spoiler)
    it basically mostly shows what the culture isn't, showing you like the photo negative of what the whole thing is about. I liked that myself, because I enjoyed tracing these "outlines" during reading it, and seeing it even more closely in the later stories. The book gains a lot when reading it again after reading some or all of the culture books, because you know much more about what it's trying to describe in negative

    But obviously doing that might put some people off, which is why often other books get recommended as starter books, mostly the one right after, "player of games", which is pretty much the exact opposite of consider phlebas, as it (general spoilers)
    basically gives you a full frontal view of what the culture itself is about.

    kFJhXwE.jpgkFJhXwE.jpg
  • notyanotya Registered User regular
    So my opinion of the first book, Consider Phlebas, in this series after having read 75% of it is... it's kind of shit.

    It's pretty much a shame, I was really looking forward to it after having read some of the reviews here about how innovative it was. It may be over hype, but it just didn't measure up for the following reasons:
    The overall plot is pretty middling. The party is tracking down a Culture AI which figured out how to warp into a planet out of desperation. However, it's following an anti-culture spy bumbling his way through one screw up after another. Like, that's 75% of the book.

    The mercenaries are all a pack of incompetent vultures and none of them are particularly worth caring about, as they inevitably get picked off because they're stupid. The Tleilaxu Face Danc-, I mean *cough* Horza was better... but he's not a character I was really invested in. He wasn't offensive, just not memorable.

    The author's interesting ideas such as an Organic/AI hybrid federation fighting a fundamentalist religious confederation which is none-the-less self determinant is one of the best parts of the book, so of course none of that is really followed barring a few odd passages here and there.

    Banks really goes over the border in to Junior High level shock value. A planet of literal shit eating cult which serves no purpose other than to have some torture porn wedged in with a strawman argument about the nature of religion and the Culture. It's the same thing earlier in the story where the bourgeois Culture allies try to drown the spy in the Palace's shit. Yeah I get it, they're a bunch of Harkonnen degenerates, but the way its present is utterly lacking in nuance. Yeah, it's dumb.

    Simply put, the book *felt* crass. Not slick, not revolutionary in the way I felt many talked about here. There were some somewhat interesting ideas, none of which was the focus of book, while the rest of the story revolved around a band of screw ups slowly getting killed off. I felt my time was wasted, and it's been a while since I slogged through a book this much.

    Sorry folks, I gave it a go.

    I also was not a huge fan of that one, but I LOVED LOVED the next one, Player of Games. I'd suggest you give it a shot.

  • zagdrobzagdrob Registered User regular
    Phlebas was the first Banks book I read and while I slogged through and completed it, it was another five or so years before I went back and read Player of Games, which as noted is a much better book.

    I'm not disappointed I read Phlebas, and if i hadn't read it initially i would eventually have and probably appreciated it more, but it's very different than the later books.

  • manwiththemachinegunmanwiththemachinegun METAL GEAR?! Registered User regular
    edited September 2021
    I understood what the book was trying to do with Horza... it's just every time the book hit something interesting: An AI talking about how smart he is, arguing with an AI taxi, a Culture thinktank Agent trying to predict Horza's next move, the Idiran Empire's motivations for war and their society... the book skipped back to a crew of screw up mercenaries who I didn't care about in the slightest.

    manwiththemachinegun on
  • SoggybiscuitSoggybiscuit Tandem Electrostatic Accelerator Registered User regular
    I’ve been slowly listening my way through the audiobooks. I’ve done The Player of Games, Use of Weapons, Surface Detail, and The Hydrogen Sonata. Currently 1/3 of the way into Matter. I really really liked Use of Weapons and Surface Detail.

    I’m kinda sad no more will be made, also sad he never got to expand on The Algebraist universe, because I really enjoyed that audiobook as well.

    Steam - Synthetic Violence | XBOX Live - Cannonfuse | PSN - CastleBravo | Twitch - SoggybiscuitPA
  • autono-wally, erotibot300autono-wally, erotibot300 love machine Registered User regular
    I understood what the book was trying to do with Horza... it's just every time the book hit something interesting: An AI talking about how smart he is, arguing with an AI taxi, a Culture thinktank Agent trying to predict Horza's next move, the Idiran Empire's motivations for war and their society... the book skipped back to a crew of screw up mercenaries who I didn't care about in the slightest.

    Well without many spoilers,
    you'll getting a lot of that in the other books

    kFJhXwE.jpgkFJhXwE.jpg
  • BrodyBrody The Watch The First ShoreRegistered User regular
    I understood what the book was trying to do with Horza... it's just every time the book hit something interesting: An AI talking about how smart he is, arguing with an AI taxi, a Culture thinktank Agent trying to predict Horza's next move, the Idiran Empire's motivations for war and their society... the book skipped back to a crew of screw up mercenaries who I didn't care about in the slightest.

    Yeah. It's why I don't like the book much. Luckily, characters almost never reappear. I don't think anyone in the Consider ever gets mentioned again. Also, you don't end up with such an edgelordy groups of edgelords in any of the other books either.

    "I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."

    The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson

    Steam: Korvalain
  • DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    Brody wrote: »
    I understood what the book was trying to do with Horza... it's just every time the book hit something interesting: An AI talking about how smart he is, arguing with an AI taxi, a Culture thinktank Agent trying to predict Horza's next move, the Idiran Empire's motivations for war and their society... the book skipped back to a crew of screw up mercenaries who I didn't care about in the slightest.

    Yeah. It's why I don't like the book much. Luckily, characters almost never reappear. I don't think anyone in the Consider ever gets mentioned again. Also, you don't end up with such an edgelordy groups of edgelords in any of the other books either.

    Hey, one of them definitely gets mentioned again!
    Doesn't a ship name themselves after Horza? Checking obsessive fan wikis I guess that was just in the epilogue and not in a later book like I thought.

    Nod. Get treat. PSN: Quippish
  • BrodyBrody The Watch The First ShoreRegistered User regular
    Brody wrote: »
    I understood what the book was trying to do with Horza... it's just every time the book hit something interesting: An AI talking about how smart he is, arguing with an AI taxi, a Culture thinktank Agent trying to predict Horza's next move, the Idiran Empire's motivations for war and their society... the book skipped back to a crew of screw up mercenaries who I didn't care about in the slightest.

    Yeah. It's why I don't like the book much. Luckily, characters almost never reappear. I don't think anyone in the Consider ever gets mentioned again. Also, you don't end up with such an edgelordy groups of edgelords in any of the other books either.

    Hey, one of them definitely gets mentioned again!
    Doesn't a ship name themselves after Horza? Checking obsessive fan wikis I guess that was just in the epilogue and not in a later book like I thought.

    I think that's in a post script to Consider. It's possible they are referenced later, but I don't believe they ever actively participate in a story the novels cover.

    "I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."

    The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson

    Steam: Korvalain
  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    edited September 2021
    Okay Culture Thread, a non-binding quick advice question:

    - Try picking up Player of Games again frmo my library and try not to get distracted again betwixt ADHD and depression/anxiety
    - Try to read any one of the other literal dozen backlogged novels* and non-fiction already in my backlog before I check out a *different* book


    *Current top contenders are finishing The Peripheral finally, having had it since release, continuing with Ancillary Justice, starting A Memory Called Empire and starting Persephone

    Lanz on
    waNkm4k.jpg?1
  • autono-wally, erotibot300autono-wally, erotibot300 love machine Registered User regular
    Player of games is widely considered the "best" of the culture books, and who doesn't have a book backlog?

    Mine has shrunk to only 8 books at the moment though

    kFJhXwE.jpgkFJhXwE.jpg
  • notyanotya Registered User regular
    Player of games is widely considered the "best" of the culture books, and who doesn't have a book backlog?

    Mine has shrunk to only 8 books at the moment though

    Honestly I don't really have a backlog. If I own a book, I start reading it. If at any point I stop reading that book and start another, there's almost zero chance I go back and finish the last one.

  • DevoutlyApatheticDevoutlyApathetic Registered User regular
    Lanz wrote: »
    Okay Culture Thread, a non-binding quick advice question:

    - Try picking up Player of Games again frmo my library and try not to get distracted again betwixt ADHD and depression/anxiety
    - Try to read any one of the other literal dozen backlogged novels* and non-fiction already in my backlog before I check out a *different* book


    *Current top contenders are finishing The Peripheral finally, having had it since release, continuing with Ancillary Justice, starting A Memory Called Empire and starting Persephone

    All but the last are pretty good books so it's hard to say not to read them but Player of Games is Pretty Darn Good as well. I will say if you try it and it doesn't grab you then you can probably write off the Culture series for you with a clear conscious.

    (Also not dissing Persephone, I just haven't read it.)

    Nod. Get treat. PSN: Quippish
  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    Lanz wrote: »
    Okay Culture Thread, a non-binding quick advice question:

    - Try picking up Player of Games again frmo my library and try not to get distracted again betwixt ADHD and depression/anxiety
    - Try to read any one of the other literal dozen backlogged novels* and non-fiction already in my backlog before I check out a *different* book


    *Current top contenders are finishing The Peripheral finally, having had it since release, continuing with Ancillary Justice, starting A Memory Called Empire and starting Persephone

    All but the last are pretty good books so it's hard to say not to read them but Player of Games is Pretty Darn Good as well. I will say if you try it and it doesn't grab you then you can probably write off the Culture series for you with a clear conscious.

    (Also not dissing Persephone, I just haven't read it.)

    I should note, it grabbed me when I started it, just like, I’ve developed this terrible problem of like… picking up one book, starting it, getting sidetracked and then losing that initial steam and then going “oooh, new book…” when the cycle begins

    And that’s why my backlog is over 15 books long at this point. For hte ones I have actively downloaded into my reader apps.

    waNkm4k.jpg?1
  • evilmrhenryevilmrhenry Registered User regular
    So my opinion of the first book, Consider Phlebas, in this series after having read 75% of it is... it's kind of shit.

    It's pretty much a shame, I was really looking forward to it after having read some of the reviews here about how innovative it was. It may be over hype, but it just didn't measure up for the following reasons:
    The overall plot is pretty middling. The party is tracking down a Culture AI which figured out how to warp into a planet out of desperation. However, it's following an anti-culture spy bumbling his way through one screw up after another. Like, that's 75% of the book.

    The mercenaries are all a pack of incompetent vultures and none of them are particularly worth caring about, as they inevitably get picked off because they're stupid. The Tleilaxu Face Danc-, I mean *cough* Horza was better... but he's not a character I was really invested in. He wasn't offensive, just not memorable.

    The author's interesting ideas such as an Organic/AI hybrid federation fighting a fundamentalist religious confederation which is none-the-less self determinant is one of the best parts of the book, so of course none of that is really followed barring a few odd passages here and there.

    Banks really goes over the border in to Junior High level shock value. A planet of literal shit eating cult which serves no purpose other than to have some torture porn wedged in with a strawman argument about the nature of religion and the Culture. It's the same thing earlier in the story where the bourgeois Culture allies try to drown the spy in the Palace's shit. Yeah I get it, they're a bunch of Harkonnen degenerates, but the way its present is utterly lacking in nuance. Yeah, it's dumb.

    Simply put, the book *felt* crass. Not slick, not revolutionary in the way I felt many talked about here. There were some somewhat interesting ideas, none of which was the focus of book, while the rest of the story revolved around a band of screw ups slowly getting killed off. I felt my time was wasted, and it's been a while since I slogged through a book this much.

    Sorry folks, I gave it a go.

    I've just read "Use of Weapons", but I noticed a similar "shock value" thing going on there, though nothing quite as bad. I'm still not sure what's up with that, but I'm putting them into two main categories:
    1) Simple revenge fantasy. This isn't all of them, but "Say hello to Space Hitler. Oh look. His head just exploded." is something that comes up.
    2) Proving the necessity of intervention. These sections can be treated as a reaction against a Star Trek-esque Prime Directive. (Which can be treated as a reaction against the imperialist nature of America.) The societies outside of the Culture tend to be barbaric, not in that they lack Starbucks, but in that they do horrifying things, and all their technology gives them is the ability to travel farther past the moral event horizon. (Though I do appreciate the short conversation about how the Culture's intervention creates societies that have a similar set of beliefs as the Culture, and that even well intentioned intervention by morally perfect hyper-intelligent beings can have problems.)

  • manwiththemachinegunmanwiththemachinegun METAL GEAR?! Registered User regular
    I like the idea of "The United Federation of Planets with AI, and black ops Section 31 officially acknowledged". I just... didn't get to read about that story.

    I'm happy to have shades of grey and pros/cons with each of the factions, but specifically with the first book its absolutely cartoonish.

  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    So my opinion of the first book, Consider Phlebas, in this series after having read 75% of it is... it's kind of shit.

    It's pretty much a shame, I was really looking forward to it after having read some of the reviews here about how innovative it was. It may be over hype, but it just didn't measure up for the following reasons:
    The overall plot is pretty middling. The party is tracking down a Culture AI which figured out how to warp into a planet out of desperation. However, it's following an anti-culture spy bumbling his way through one screw up after another. Like, that's 75% of the book.

    The mercenaries are all a pack of incompetent vultures and none of them are particularly worth caring about, as they inevitably get picked off because they're stupid. The Tleilaxu Face Danc-, I mean *cough* Horza was better... but he's not a character I was really invested in. He wasn't offensive, just not memorable.

    The author's interesting ideas such as an Organic/AI hybrid federation fighting a fundamentalist religious confederation which is none-the-less self determinant is one of the best parts of the book, so of course none of that is really followed barring a few odd passages here and there.

    Banks really goes over the border in to Junior High level shock value. A planet of literal shit eating cult which serves no purpose other than to have some torture porn wedged in with a strawman argument about the nature of religion and the Culture. It's the same thing earlier in the story where the bourgeois Culture allies try to drown the spy in the Palace's shit. Yeah I get it, they're a bunch of Harkonnen degenerates, but the way its present is utterly lacking in nuance. Yeah, it's dumb.

    Simply put, the book *felt* crass. Not slick, not revolutionary in the way I felt many talked about here. There were some somewhat interesting ideas, none of which was the focus of book, while the rest of the story revolved around a band of screw ups slowly getting killed off. I felt my time was wasted, and it's been a while since I slogged through a book this much.

    Sorry folks, I gave it a go.

    I've just read "Use of Weapons", but I noticed a similar "shock value" thing going on there, though nothing quite as bad. I'm still not sure what's up with that, but I'm putting them into two main categories:
    1) Simple revenge fantasy. This isn't all of them, but "Say hello to Space Hitler. Oh look. His head just exploded." is something that comes up.
    2) Proving the necessity of intervention. These sections can be treated as a reaction against a Star Trek-esque Prime Directive. (Which can be treated as a reaction against the imperialist nature of America.) The societies outside of the Culture tend to be barbaric, not in that they lack Starbucks, but in that they do horrifying things, and all their technology gives them is the ability to travel farther past the moral event horizon. (Though I do appreciate the short conversation about how the Culture's intervention creates societies that have a similar set of beliefs as the Culture, and that even well intentioned intervention by morally perfect hyper-intelligent beings can have problems.)

    The societies which exist outside the Culture are, to a tee, a Bank's criticisms on human society writ large across his cosmos. I've always read the series as The Culture is what he wishes we would become (but doesn't believe we would necessarily be able to) and their "opponents" are human weakness and monstrosity transposed.

    Use Of Weapons is really interesting in this regard though because there is a whole very prescient section on the naivete of the "only human" Culture agent insisting the power change would be "quite bloodless" and the reality of what actually happens (contrast that with what people imagined of the American military going into Afghanistan and what the result was basically from the get go).

  • see317see317 Registered User regular
    notya wrote: »
    Player of games is widely considered the "best" of the culture books, and who doesn't have a book backlog?

    Mine has shrunk to only 8 books at the moment though

    Honestly I don't really have a backlog. If I own a book, I start reading it. If at any point I stop reading that book and start another, there's almost zero chance I go back and finish the last one.

    Makes sense. If you had really been enjoying the book, you wouldn't have picked up a different one until you were finished.

  • WinkyWinky rRegistered User regular
    I wouldn't call Player of Games the best Culture book (I'd probably give that to Look to Windward) but it's definitely probably the best place to start.

  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    I would say that Player of Games is the most cinematic of the early books. I really hope someone options it eventually.

  • WinkyWinky rRegistered User regular
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I would say that Player of Games is the most cinematic of the early books. I really hope someone options it eventually.

    One of the things I do when I'm out of video games to play is pluck away at a script for a TV adaptation of Player of Games. I don't imagine it will go anywhere but it's a fun exercise.

  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    Winky wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I would say that Player of Games is the most cinematic of the early books. I really hope someone options it eventually.

    One of the things I do when I'm out of video games to play is pluck away at a script for a TV adaptation of Player of Games. I don't imagine it will go anywhere but it's a fun exercise.

    I feel like it would work great as a TV miniseries. Most of the book is people sitting around talking. There are only a handful of set piece action scenes. Even the aliens are budget friendly.

  • BrodyBrody The Watch The First ShoreRegistered User regular
    notya wrote: »
    Player of games is widely considered the "best" of the culture books, and who doesn't have a book backlog?

    Mine has shrunk to only 8 books at the moment though

    Honestly I don't really have a backlog. If I own a book, I start reading it. If at any point I stop reading that book and start another, there's almost zero chance I go back and finish the last one.

    I have a spreadsheet of books that I've heard people talk about and I want to try reading eventually, but 99% of my reading is done through the library, so its not like I've got actual books backlogged to read.

    "I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."

    The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson

    Steam: Korvalain
  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
    I like the idea of "The United Federation of Planets with AI, and black ops Section 31 officially acknowledged". I just... didn't get to read about that story.

    I'm happy to have shades of grey and pros/cons with each of the factions, but specifically with the first book its absolutely cartoonish.

    well as mentioned, that's cause almost all the other culture books are basically reading about that stuff. Phlebas is an odd one, and if it helps,
    Horza is supposed to be a monumental fuckup that makes everybody's life worse

  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
    anyway if what you're into is exploring a) shades of grey in intervention/war, and b) black ops AI and inter-AI politics, I would definitely recommend Inversions for a and Excession for b (though the latter probably benefits from having at least a few culture books under your belt, because it's quite late in the timeline).

Sign In or Register to comment.