The player of games

288 pages

English language

Published Dec. 25, 1988 by Macmillan.

ISBN:
978-0-333-47110-4
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4 stars (4 reviews)

The Culture - a human/machine symbiotic society - has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is Gurgeh. Jernau Morat Gurgeh. The Player of Games. Master of every board, computer, and strategy. Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game ... a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh accepts the game, and with it the challenge of his life - a very possibly his death.

21 editions

Review of 'The Player of Games (Culture, #2)' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Reread:
I reread this book as comfort food because I remembered the line where Gurgeh, the protagonist, agrees that life is not fair, but we can try to make it more fair. It's wonderful to imagine a people like the Culture coming in dismantling an evil empire.


Original review:
This is the best of the three Banks novels I've read so far. It probably helps that I didn't find the protagonist to be unrealistically badass and yet at the same time sort of whiny (problems I had with Use of Weapons).

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