Iain M Banks - where to start with Culture series

EarthRod

Just get stuck in and read the books immediately - stop faffing about!

Seriously, Iain Banks graphic style of writing ensures you get lost in the storyline and don't want to put the book down once you get started.

I agree with FruitBat - start with the earlier book 'Consider Phlebas' and read in order of publication. That way you'll notice how Banks develops and grows as a SciFi writer.

lucasisking

OK guys, thanks.  CP ordered

EndlessWaves

I found Consider Phlebas to be the best out of the series, although player of games came a decent second. Most of the other ones (fearsome engine, use of weapons etc.) I read but I can't remember a thing about. I'm not generally a fan of his culture novels and find the non-culture books to be much better.

KiLLiNG-TiME

Ah well I recommended Excession mainly because of the subject matter!! but they are all great in my view some better than others & vice versa but yes start were you will at the beginning is where I started all those many years ago with Consider Phlebas ..Enjoy.

My favs Excession Use of Weapons & Look to Windward.

lucasisking

Well Im now halfway through Consider Phlebas.  Despite taking me a little while to get into (probably due to my wandering mind), I'm really into it.  I've just got to the part where The Culture , and Banks' descriptive writing here is incredible.  What a shocking, awesome, horrifying, fantastic and quite upsetting event.  Not to mention the other wonders; the megaships, the orbital and the general systems vehicles.  

One thing that strikes me, not necesarily in a good way, are the profanities and colloqualisms, which seem at odds with the super-civilisation described.  However I have to remind myself that the characters aren't literally speaking in English but in Marain!has destroyed the Vavatch Orbital using gridfire

EarthRod

Fwi-Song and his sets of metal teeth are something to remember!

"" Lovely stuff! Shtand gack! Hold hish arn out ang ee'll show gish naughty goy how we geel wish
hish short!

lucasisking

He's like a cross between Hannibal Lecter and Jabba the Hutt! One of the ickier scenes in the book.  Yuck!

EarthRod

Yes - you'll find that many of the 'baddies' are a bit OTT. Mr Banks likes to paint them in a very bad light!

There are quite a few foibles in Banks's's's' writings, but no doubt you will spot them...

... And forgive him because they are balanced out by the incredibly good descriptions and flow of the storyline.

Greg Hook

I've read a lot of Iain M Banks and Iain Banks. I did enjoy most of the Culture books and his other sci-fi, but one that I can't remember the name of I just had to quit on. It had whole parts with a character who spoke with an accent, but instead of letting you do the accent in your head and read it normally, it was written so when you read it the accent would come out, but that made it incredibly hard and slow to read. I like the reading to flow, but this was just too much of a stutter.

EarthRod

That's 'Feersum Endjinn' which is written phonetically much of the time (about 1/3 of the book).

I couldn't get on with it and never finished it - found it annoying!