![]() ![]() Except, he thinks he’s content with that life. Gurgeh is a bit bored with his life, which doesn’t offer him many challenges anymore. They’re playing a long game of keeping civilizations that are less stable and less peaceful – barbaric, if you will – from posing a threat to the peace and stability of the Galaxy. And the games they play as they work to keep it stable and safe. The Player of Games takes readers within this ancient and stable civilization and rather subversively introduces us to the Minds who run it. Just who the book’s title actually refers to is but one of the bits of authorial legerdemaine we’ll contend with as we follow the story.īanks’s first Culture novel Consider Phlebas introduced us to The Culture through the eyes of a freelance warrior on the other side, who’s fighting against The Culture because he hates what he sees as its smug decadence. The story begins with a battle that is not a battle and ends with a game that isn’t a game, we’re told. ![]() ![]() From the very outset we’re told by the unidentified narrator that all is not what it seems. It’s a deceptively layered story, something of a game in itself. This is the story of Jernau Morat Gurgeh, one of the best gamers in The Culture. It already has many of the hallmarks of his truly spectacular later Culture books like Matter and Surface Detail, although the plot is more streamlined and the action less sprawling. Banks’ second novel of The Culture, originally published in 1988. ![]()
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