Consider Phlebas
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Consider Phlebas Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Iain M. Banks (Author), Peter Kenny (Narrator), Hachette Audio (Publisher)
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 11,022 ratings
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The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction - cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.

Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.

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  1. Listening Length
    16 hours and 26 minutes
  2. Author
    Iain M. Banks
  3. Narrator
    Peter Kenny
  4. Audible release date
    May 6, 2011
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Hachette Audio
  7. ASIN
    B004ZN7WCM
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
  10. See all details
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Product details

Listening Length 16 hours and 26 minutes
Author Iain M. Banks
Narrator Peter Kenny
Whispersync for Voice Ready
Audible.com Release Date May 06, 2011
Publisher Hachette Audio
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B004ZN7WCM
Best Sellers Rank #5,097 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#37 in Hard Science Fiction (Audible Books & Originals)
#140 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)
#143 in Space Opera Science Fiction (Audible Books & Originals)

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
4.1 out of 5
11,022 global ratings
jacket summary
5 Stars
jacket summary
from the back cover of the October 1991 Bantam paperback editionBora Horza Gobuchul is a Changer, one of a near-extinct race who alters cell structure to become anyone they want - the most feared and sought-after spies in the universe. Horza fights on the side of the Idirans in a religious crusade against the smug, sterile machine worshippers of the Culture. Now he wants his freedom.But first he must hazard one final mission. He'll engage in a shoot-out in a giant crystal temple. Encounter a grossly obese cannibal determined to eat him alive. And witness a deadly game of Damage on a vast space habitat about to be blown to bits...
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Top reviews from the United States

icdbeez
5.0 out of 5 stars This is One of Bank's Best!
Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2012
Verified Purchase
I absolutely loved this book, but that is not surprising, because Banks as an author is simply a master. The cadences of his sentence structure are so finely generated that they perfectly get the meaning across, and also work absolutely for any master storyteller for reading out load. As an example, take the first page of Consider Phlebas. Any storyteller worth their salt could read that page and easily know where to add pauses and inflection, slowing and lowering of voice to make those words come alive. I can hear them come alive in my head just that way. This book is a mind feast. Along with Use of Weapons and Player of Games this has gone on my short list of favorite Banks books.

The plot of the book has been gone done at least 136 times before by the people who have reviewed the book ahead of me. The real reason behind the book was to examine the rationale of country's that go to war and what it does to the people directly fighting in them. From that standpoint it succeeded. Neither the Culture nor the Idrians expected a full scale war, or one that lasted as long, or had so many casualties. There any number of twists and turns in the plot, and many times when you are on the edge of your seat, drawn into the action; literally flying through the pages dying to know what will happen to Bora Horza and his shipmates.

The characterization in this novel is so stellar that few could do it better. While we're not talking a cast of thousands, we are talking about creating many different off-world people,each with their own physical and mental characteristics. That is a tall order, and yet Banks makes it seem simple. The other thing he makes seem simple is worldbuilding. What a job that is - and yet what a stellar job he does. Whether it is the three legged, religious, insectoid Idrians and their Battlecruisers , the Culture and their Orbitals, or Shar's World, a planet of the Dead. Even the forest of Black Holes is so amazingly written. You can see all of it in detail in your minds eye because his prose is so masterfully constructed, so wordsmithed that you can't help yourself.

The pacing in the book was not swift all the way through. It had slower bits where you were learning with the characters, or the characters were resting or traveling. Then there bits of great excitement or terror, or a build up to even greater terror and then back to the slower bits. I figure this pace is more like real life and less like life for the attention deficit generation who need Dan Brown type of stimulation of "always on" to be entertained.

While the ending was sad, even in the appendices, Banks did stop and make you think about the motives of governments in everything that they do. Especially the price they pay for the decisions they make - when those decisions cost Billions of human lives. Because of this book, I'm still thinking about that question, and probably will be for a long time yet.

I would whole heartedly recommend this book to anyone who likes sci-fi, or just a thumping good read. It is so absolutely, positively one of the most wonderfully written books ever! I can't help myself from gushing about it. Have yourself a mind feast today. Go ahead - just buy it!
11 people found this helpful
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Antinomian
4.0 out of 5 stars An Amalgamation of All The Great Aspects of Sci-Fi Up Until 1987, 497 Pages, Publ 1987, 3-1/2 Stars
Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2006
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Reading the prologue of this book is like enjoying steaming hot delicious fresh lobster dripping in dipped butter, surrounded by a thick layer of luxurious, creamy ice cream, with that surrounded by a layer of delicious dark chocolate. This novel's prologue, and that of James Hogan's Code of the Lifemaker, are probably the two most ecstasy endorphin producing prologue's I may ever have read. However, as in the case of eating something delicious, there's some measure of guilt afterwards. The prologue is everything the Science Fiction Writer's of America (SFWA) have been warning for decades. They even sponsor the derogatory phrase `space opera' for this type of science fiction. The word `opera' used in conjunction with any other term usually doesn't evoke any positive visions. Does anyone think positively of `soap operas'? When I read the term `space opera' I think of some large, massively built woman, wearing some viking hat with horns singing Battle of the Valkries in a piercing voice, although perhaps instead, to keep it in a sci-fi vein, with a horseshoe-crab-like forehead singing a Klingon Death Song ending in "Ka-Plah!". (Although the SFWA somehow despises the term `sci-fi' which to me rhymes with hi-fi which means high-fidelity which brings visions of $20,000 stereo speakers taller than you are tweaked by a team of experts connected to a multi-thousand dollar amplifier, so go figure.) Members of the SFWA have been worried about this type of space adventure/space war type of novel detracting from what they consider cutting-edge SF, such as magical amulets, colored auras, female middle-age angst, faery handbags, lesbianism (no joke!), etc.

So, OK, after the sheer enjoyment after reading the prologue, I started out with giving this book 4 stars, not wanting to give it too high a rating too soon, dropped it a 1/2 star during the middle of the novel and then another 1/2 star towards the end. One problem is that the book is too long, the episodes too drawn out. The other is that it's too derivative. Being derivative isn't necessarily bad, it's difficult to write something new and unique, often it's taking a theme and making something new out of it. But in this books case it feels derivative. I read aspects of a multitude of past science fiction books and movies here, such as EE Smith's Lensman series, Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination, Larry Niven's Ringworld, Asimov's Foundation series, the original Star Wars, the movie Alien, and others. This though I suppose could be considered a strength for newer readers of science fiction; that one can read this book and get caught up to date (publ date, 1987 in this case) to science fiction without having to read or watch other science fiction books or movies. The book also lacks a certain amount of sophistication. Although it's a straight-forward book, so that it would, with the rich combination of science fiction themes, make this a good book for readers in their late teens.

This book was recommended to me by someone who considered this the greatest science fiction book written, even better than Orson Scott Card's Enders Game. I think many readers of science fiction would argue that, considering that Enders Game swept both the Nebula and Hugo awards for the year of its publication. Not only did Consider Phelbas not win any of those awards, it wasn't even nominated as a finalist for either of them. Now from 1987 onward, this doesn't mean much for the Nebula considering what the SFWA have given the award to, however for the Hugo award, which are voted on by the fans, these awards tend to be bestowed to really great science fiction including those novels that would be considered `fun', which Consider Phelbas could certainly be categorized as.

I increased my final rating by 1/2 star by recognizing that the final hero of the story may appeal to certain readers that don't always see this type of hero in science fiction.

The main protagonist of the story is certainly nebulous when it comes to morality. There are certain situations that he's placed into that are not directly his fault, such as arriving on a pirate ship into a `me-vs.-him' situation. A definition of love could be described as a feeling for someone that you would be willing to die for them. However, would you be willing to die for someone you're not in love in, or even someone that's not a scientific genius, a great artist, president, or some other high-level official? How about dying for someone you don't even know? Would you be willing now to kill, in order not be killed... literally with a gun pointed to your head? Could you live with it... because if you can't, you won't. So there's some ambiguity of one's actions, including the protagonists, in such a situation. However, as the story progresses, the main protagonist shows a continuous disregard for sentient beings.

To some reviewers it was difficult to understand the motivation of the main protagonist, Horza. Like a previous reviewer suggested, the main protagonist picking one of the two sides at war is like someone joining the Communists in order to fight the Nazis. Or one could say joining the Nazis to fight the Communists. Now if you have a different emotion reaction to these two statements, considering there are library shelves filled with the atrocities committed by Communists; filled with tortures committed by the Communists, tortures to the eyes, to reproductive organs, with `interrogation' rooms with gullies for the rivulets of blood, so as not to cause an inconvenient trip hazard to the `workers', with triangular shaped knives that would cause wounds that won't heal so to keep the torturers from taking additional time from their busy schedules to have to re-stab their victims. That the Communists, as well as the Nazis, maybe didn't cause deaths in the Megamillions as in the novel, but did butcher people in the Deca-millions. Now if an organization brutally murders people in the DECA-millions and all you get is a shrug, a blasé tone of voice, and a "ech, whatcha gonna do", then you know something is seriously screwed up. So it's *easy* then to understand how Horza is able to justify his positions, and then it becomes easy to understand how Horza picks his side.
27 people found this helpful
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Thomas
3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but not fantastic.
Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2023
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I guess I expected more. And knowing that this was the fist of 10 books in the Culture "series" I guess I expected it to be a series. It's not. Well, at least this one is not. You won't ever see these people again. Well, I don't know that either, but I know that book 2 seemes to be taking place far far far into the future of when book 1 was written. I don't know if they are all stand alone books, but book 1 and 2 are not connected in anything other than that The Culture is where it takes place.
It's like a book about. Caligula and a book about Charlie Chaplin, and calling it a series because they are both humans.
Only half way through book 2. This "book 1" was okay. All plotlines were taken care of, the character development was alright. Motivations of the characters were sometimes apparent. But not sure I really cared about any of them. In this book, not even sure if "The Culture" were the good guys. It tries to make a point to reinforce that the Culture is the better folk as an afterward in the book. A LITERAL afterward.
It's an alright book, it's worth the time to read, but don't expect to walkway and, like really good books, wish there was more and wonder what happens next to the characters that have become friends. Frankly you are not walking away from this book with any friends. I had a hard enough time caring about the main character while I was reading. The funny part is this is book one of the Culture series and the main character is a guy fighting a war AGAINST the Culture.
It's not bad, but if someone asked me to recommend a book, this one would never cross my mind.
4 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Zerfer
5.0 out of 5 stars Bombastic Debut
Reviewed in Canada on April 15, 2024
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Top tier of all time Sci fi stories had to shift over and make room for this incredibly original work.
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Jesus Mario
3.0 out of 5 stars Más largo de lo necesario
Reviewed in Mexico on September 20, 2021
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Esta bueno pero esta mucho más largo de lo que debería de estar
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jose Mohamed
4.0 out of 5 stars lo que esperaba
Reviewed in Spain on September 11, 2023
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lo que esperaba
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Cliente Kindle
3.0 out of 5 stars just normal
Reviewed in Brazil on March 7, 2020
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it's ok. nothing more, nothing less.
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Simon H.
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant forecast into the future
Reviewed in Germany on August 14, 2019
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The book is brillant.
I do recommend even more:
- The Player of Games
- Matter
Many thing which are under developing now are written in the culture series: smartphones, AI, drones, neural lace, ..
The Series is also a good refelection on our current society.
2 people found this helpful
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