Consider Phlebas was an amazing experience despite some flaws.
The Jinmoti of Bozlen Two kill the hereditary ritual assassins of the new.....
Okay, I was craving some sci-fi, so I picked up the first book of The Culture series by Iain M. Banks. It's GREAT. At times, the world was awe-inspiring, and the prose was fantastic.
It gave me the same feeling I had when I first started reading Earthsea. Earthsea felt like more than just fantasy. It felt like that, kind of.
But all that changed on Schar’s World. Banks shifted his storytelling style. Near the end, it felt like three or four minutes’ worth of story stretched over more than a hundred pages, constantly jumping between viewpoints every few lines.
It felt like he was deliberately trying to annoy the reader. It wasn’t a dealbreaker, the prose was strong enough to keep me going.
But the protagonist, who initially seemed competent, delivering lines like “Who is in charge here, you or the drone over your shoulder?”, which felt relevant in the current AI climate, suddenly turned utterly stupid. Stupider than Fritz, which I thought was impossible.
Overall I liked the world. I liked the idea of a Utopian world and wanted to find out more, but now I’m not so sure. Are the rest of the books like this? I mean like the third act! Does it get better?