Yalson is a slightly furry humanoid woman working aboard the Clear Air Turbulence. She forms an intimate relationship with Horza during the time he is aboard the ship. Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Balveda's escape from the Hand of God. Made more awesome by how matter-of-fact she is about it. There are nice pieces of invention: the Megaships, the Game of Damage with real Lives – but they are not derived from the basic premises of the story, any more than the pseudo-mediaevalism of the Gerontocracy’s dungeon/sewer in which we begin, which could easily have leaked out of Pratchett.

Sympathetic P.O.V.: Horza hates the Culture and, for example, while the later novels draw humor from the humorous/macabre names the Culture gives to ships, he's disgusted by this apparent display of the Culture's cavalier attitude towards something as grim as interstellar warfare. This Cannot Be!: Discussed, by the narration anyway. It's noted that a lesser AI might have this sort of reaction to learning that a human Referer can outsmart it, while the Culture Minds instead find this rather amusing. So in the end I would say that Consider Phlebas is not a complete success or failure as a novel, but its primary importance is in establishing the template and introduction to the fantastic and limitless potential of the CULTURE universe. I think the next two novels in the series, The Player of Games (1988) and Use of Weapons (1990), are frequently considered some of the best entries in the series, but I’ve also heard that Banks actually got better the further he refined his understanding of his own universe, so that later books in the series are also very good. That itself is unusual in a genre that is notorious for overlong series that essentially churn out the same stories shamelessly to an audience who reward this behavior by faithfully purchasing the next installment. So it’s quite unusual for an author like Banks to become so popular, but that’s a really good thing in my opinion. Still, Banks does offer readers an introduction to what has become one of the most popular science fiction settings in the last thirty years. Although there are high points in Consider Phlebas, it is worth noting that each CULTURE novel offers something unique, and these novels can be read independently of the others.Horza can be cruel and ruthless, but many readers will find themselves rooting for him because he is an underdog. After all, he has taken on perhaps the most difficult assignment in the universe: outwitting a Culture Mind. As if that were not enough, Banks seems to almost enjoy twisting circumstance against Horza. In spite of his best-laid plans, things never seem to go as planned. Ghost Planet: Schar's World, the planet where the lost Mind is hiding, is a world that once evolved sentient life with an advanced civilization until said life wiped itself out in the culmination of something like our Cold War. Anti-Hero / Anti-Villain: Horza is the former in respect to the novel, but could be seen as the latter to the extent that the Culture itself is the protagonist of the series.

Author Iain M. Banks revealed in April 2013 that he had late-stage cancer. He died the following June. This Was His True Form: Balveda has a moment invoking this trope as she takes Horza's corpse with her off the planet at the end, reminiscing that for all their interactions, this is the first time she has seen his real face. Now we meet our protagonist, Bora Horza Gobuchul. He is a spy, from a species known as Changers—humans who are able to alter their appearance to impersonate nearly anyone they like, which obviously makes them extremely valuable spies. They have other interesting characteristics as well: venomous teeth and nails, for instance. Phil Daoust in The Guardian said the story was an "enjoyable romp" and described Quilan as "one of the misguided yet decent villains who are a feature of these [Culture] tales". [1] He went on to complain of the heavy emphasis given to the consequences of war and that the Chelgrians were too thinly disguised humans. [1] Bora Horza Gobuchul is a Changer and an operative of the Idiran Empire. He was one of a party of Changers allowed on Schar's World, and for that reason is tasked by the Idirans with retrieving a Mind that had crashed to the planet. Horza is humanoid, but committed to the Idiran cause despite the fact that he does not believe in their god and does not agree with their harsh and aggressive expansion. He despises the Culture for its dependence on machines, and the fact that Culture's machines seemingly rule over the Culture humans, which he perceives to be spiritually empty and an evolutionary dead end.Athens and Sparta: A galactic-scale version with the Culture versus the Idirans. The former are a pleasure-seeking post-Singularity Utopia who love sleek shiny technology and are ruled by their machines, while the latter are a Proud Warrior Race of Scary Dogmatic Aliens who utilise Boring, but Practical technology and are convinced A.I. Is a Crapshoot. Given that the Culture are determined to 'enlighten' the less developed civilisations in the galaxy and bring them round to their way of thinking, while the Idirans are more concerned about converting everybody to their religion, war between the two was pretty much inevitable.