Banks, Ian M.
CONSIDER PHLEBAS
Iain M. Banks
St. Martin's Press 1987
Hardback 471 pages (including 20 pages of Appendices)
ISBN # 0-312-01752-9
Awesome. Sobering. An incredible work.
Iain Banks' far future has humanity spread through the galaxy in a society
called "the Culture." They are hedonistic and smug. They love their lives,
justified by the secular evangelism of other cultures, and by the creation of
Minds--machines with conscious thought.
Idirans are enormous bio-armored aliens that walk on three thick legs. They are under a "jihad to calm, integrate and instruct other species and bring them under the direct eye of their God." In other words, they are at war with the humans.
Some humans, however, choose to fight on the side of the Idirans. One such person is Bora Horza Gobuchul, though 'person' is a loose term. Horza is really a Changer, a subspecies of human which can transform its appearance into the likeness of another. And since Horza does not like the elitist Culture, he changes into whomever the Idiran's want him to so that he can spy on the Culture for them.
The story opens, after a brief Prologue elsewhere, with this Idiran agent (Horza) posing as a top Culture official. They caught him, and Horza is drowning in swage at the hands of his enemies--for spying. Here also we meet Horza's counterpart, the Culture agent Perosteck Balveda. These two agents have a grudging respect for each other, a respect that deepens as Mister Banks pulls the reader through one action-packed scene after another and another. (This is NOT a boring book!)
Occasionally Banks dips into a Culture perspective or an Idiran one, but mostly he stays with Horza as the Changer and Balveda both race toward the deadly planet of Schar's World. A Mind has escaped a battle with Idirans and is hiding there, a most clever Mind with a great secret. Whoever can reach it first will turn the tide of the war to their side's favor. But Horza has many battles to go through before he gets there. Along the way, he meets mercenaries. Horza has to kill to stay alive. And many of these characters are developed into likable people who are hard to part with when the war kills them off ... one by one. Banks pulls the reader through pain and disgust, humor and sorrow. He shows both sides of the war, shows how it can twist the people who fight in one. Banks paints a planet so bleak with ice, the prose is comparable to London's To Build a Fire. There is death on Schar's World: and it is beautifully written.
This book is highly recommended for space-opera fans, as well as any reader who enjoys a good literary journey. Just be sure to read the appendices, every poignant line of them.
Return to Reviews