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Player of Games is amazing.

Serious question, what is so amazing about it?

Based on recommendations (I'm a scifi fan) I bought it and read it. It was an OK read, not boring or anything, but also hardly extraordinary. For me easily forgettable. I don't have the feeling I missed some important part since it wasn't really very complex.

So I'm curious why people think it's so good.

Not sure, I'm not really a literary critic. I guess Banks does a good job of setting up the bad guys to be real arseholes, then knocks them down. The pacing had me reading this book in just two days, which is unusual for me.

This sprinkled with cool ideas like the giant brush fire, the whole empire being based on a game, the ship names. I also like board games which probably doesn't hurt the book.

I like most of the Culture books. My other favorite is Use of Weapons which is very different from Player of Games, much slower.

It's a great allegory for classist society, and the arbitrary and self-serving nature of the processes by which class hierarchies maintain themselves.

I don't care for any book in particular (except maybe Excession). I more just enjoy the Culture universe.

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