Do you find it hard to “visualize” Banks’ writing? I read Consider Phlebas and I’m part way through Player of Games right now, but it takes me forever* to get through these books because I feel lost and can’t make a mental picture of wtf is going on. The Culture series reminds me a lot of Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space series, but I had no trouble wrapping my mind around Reynolds’ far-future setting. Is there a book somewhere in the middle of the Culture series that I should start with to get a better description of his universe?
I’m doing the audio books, but that doesn’t make it any easier to follow. I thought player of games was absolutely fantastic and brilliantly written, but I’ve found some of the books very complex.
With player of games he never actually describes the nature of the game board itself. I think that was intentional, he left it up to the reader. I found that fascinating.
I’m a bit of an aspiring author and this series is quite frankly inspiring. Not in it’s confounding complexity but all the good bits.
Some of it is hard to visualize but for me sometimes it’s hard to follow. I’m glad I’m not the only one who finds him challenging.
The one I’m on now seems to have elephant people in it and I definitely didn’t quite put that together for quite a while lol.
As far as the nature of the culture, I don’t know if any one book does a better job of describing the universe. Each book illustrates one facet of it, in my opinion. It’s a big universe he’s made, you get snapshots.
It’s like he has this universe in his head and with each book he is exploring one specific topic of discussion, in the culture universe, and with each book it sheds a little more light onto what the culture really is.
It reminds me of the stainless steel rat series. Deep and meaningful ideas tempered by humor and whimsy.
