Ranking Iain (M) Banks' Novels

[Big Orange]

Here is my breakdown of Iain M. Banks' sci-fi novels (which include his non-M novels as well):

Classic - Use of Weapons, The Player of Games, Against a Dark Background (what I read of it, I'm up to page 175)

Great - Consider Phlebas, Matter, Look to Windward

Very Good - Inversions, The Algebraist, Feersum Endjinn, The State of the Art, Excession

Good - A Song of Stone, The Business


I always hear that The Crow Road, The Wasp Factory and The Bridge are the best of the non-Ms. It is very hard to pick my favourite, since I've never yet come accross a genuinely 'bad' book by Banks (I've had mixed feelings about The Algebraist, initially thought it was a tad overrated, but on hindsight it is actually one of Banks' better recent books and deserves another re-read to properly digest it. CP has moved up a few spaces in my personal ranking as well).

[CaptJodan]

Is the purpose of this thread for others to post their own rankings, cause I'm not sure what the purpose is.

I'll assume that. I haven't read as many novels as others have, and none of the non-M versions. Of those I have read, it goes as follows:

Great: Excession

Very Good: The Player of Games, Look to Windward

Good/Decent: Inversions, Consider Phlebas

Poor: Use of Weapons

I intend to read Matter when it comes out in paperback.

Most people would strongly disagree with my ranking. Excession was great for its grand scope, the greater look at the Minds, and quite frankly, for all the tech toys and a decent look at space combat. Call me shallow. I also enjoyed the ending.

Use of Weapons was improved by a second reading. The first time around, I couldn't keep track of where I was in the time line, but I had a much better grasp the second time around. Also, I took my time, already having my expectations lowered on the first read through. I loved Banks' use of the chair and battleship and how it wove throughout the book. The symbolism was great. Having said that, the journey wasn't worth the destination for me.

I've been trying to get a friend of mine into Banks. I started him on Player of Games, and he couldn't get past page 60 before putting it down. He then read Excession and found he liked it a lot as well, then went back and finished PoG. I've given him LtW, UoW, and CP to read and we'll see where that goes, but he suggested that Excession isn't has hard a book to get into as people claim it is.

[Covenant]

Excession seems to be universally the most accessible Culture novel. It presents the Culture in a proper, epic light that involves the reader enough to get past the wierdness, but it also focuses enough on the Minds for the duration that the strange sort of uber-strategy that the Culture does is reduced to a smokey backroom dealing between powerful people. That makes it a lot easier to understand. The only aliens you really have to deal much with are the Affront, and they're so two-dimensional (intentionally, they just aren't deep-thinkers as a species) that it's very easy to 'get' them too.

Overall, while it's not a great book on some of the merits we judge books by, it is a great book because it lets you start chewing on the Culture stuff before you read anything else. Excession was the first Culture novel I read at all, and I felt that it gave me a fantastic platform to jump into the other novels, ones that I never felt were there in the other books I read. Those tended to be murkier, more subdued, harder to conceptualize. Excession just makes it easier to comprehend.

[Karza]

Use of Weapons was improved by a second reading. The first time around, I couldn't keep track of where I was in the time line, but I had a much better grasp the second time around. Also, I took my time, already having my expectations lowered on the first read through. I loved Banks' use of the chair and battleship and how it wove throughout the book. The symbolism was great. Having said that, the journey wasn't worth the destination for me.

Funny, "the journey wasn't worth the destination" perfectly summarizes how I felt about Consider Phlebas, whereas Use of Weapons was an instant favorite.

And I agree with the notion that Excession is a good place to start, I started there myself and I have to say the other books would've definitely taken some getting used to if it wasn't for Excession giving a good overall view of just what sort of a place the Culture is.

Can't really rank the books apart from saying Consider Phlebas is the one I like the least.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I honestly can't fathom how anyone can rate UoW lower than ANY other Culture novel. It is the magnum opus of Banks, and MacLeod and others acknowledge as such. While CP still has a place close to my heart, along with Excession and tPoG, UoW is the piece that defined the author for me. And it is still a unique novel to this date in its execution and appeal to myself.

[andrewgpaul]

I'd have to rate Player of Games as the least good of the SF novels. Use of Weapons is good, but hard going, especially towards the end. Sometimes Zakalwe's life gets that bit too shitty.

Personally, I think my favourite is Against a Dark Background. The plot's rather straightforward - hunt the maguffin - but I think the setting is fantastic.

[Androsphinx]

I always start people on Player of Games, because Banks plays around with all his favourite ideas and constructs but the learning curve is the least steep of any of the Culture novels.

The thing I didn't get so much about Matter was how much the publicity (and Banks himself) emphasised its complexity (and the long appendices), whereas Excession or CP were much trickier to keep track of.

The Wasp Factory is great, as are The Bridge and Whit. The State of the Art (the novella, not the collection) is also lot of fun, as a Culture/1980s crossover. Some of the other short stories which are collected with it are good as well (though I don't think any of them are based in the Culture).

I'll throw in an honorary mention to The Algebraist, which as literature is fairly superficial, but is also a good introduction to Banks as a writer of space opera and creator of brilliantly-realised universes.[/i]

[Androsphinx]

I'm always quite amused at my scifi reading friends who won't touch the non-M books (except for The Wasp Factory, which is mildly fantastical, and The Business, which is a scifi story in all but backdrop); and my friends who consider Iain Banks to be a serious modern writer whose forays into scifi are a regrettable quirk (like Rushdie, Atwood or Amis, but more prolific).

The common denominator between them is that Banks produces a new book every two years

[andrewgpaul]

I was introduced to Banks by the BBC's adaption of The Crow Road, but the only other 'non-M' book I've read was iThe Wasp Factory. I started The Business (mostly because the main character went to a (fictional) school that's round the corner from my house), but bounced off. I really should try again, I suppose.

[Androsphinx]

I was introduced to Banks by the BBC's adaption of The Crow Road, but the only other 'non-M' book I've read was iThe Wasp Factory. I started The Business (mostly because the main character went to a (fictional) school that's round the corner from my house), but bounced off. I really should try again, I suppose.

The Steep Approach to Garbadale has a lot in common with The Crow Road, and it's very interesting to work out how Banks has changed in 20-25 years of writing. IIRC, it had the working title Matter, which went instead to his next scifi book (and looking at the two of them side by side is very interesting). While I think of it, there's a lot to be said about A Song of Stone and Use of Weapons

The Business is probably Banks' weakest book - it's very readable but doesn't work wonderfully either straight-up or as satire. Pretty much any of the others are well worth reading.

[Ford Prefect]

I honestly can't fathom how anyone can rate UoW lower than ANY other Culture novel. It is the magnum opus of Banks, and MacLeod and others acknowledge as such. While CP still has a place close to my heart, along with Excession and tPoG, UoW is the piece that defined the author for me. And it is still a unique novel to this date in its execution and appeal to myself.

Quite frankly, I believe Use of Weapons to be one of the finest novels ever written. I haven't read everything by Banks, but Use of Weapons is the piece which I would say fully encompases his talent.

[The Grim Squeaker]

I honestly can't fathom how anyone can rate UoW lower than ANY other Culture novel. It is the magnum opus of Banks, and MacLeod and others acknowledge as such. While CP still has a place close to my heart, along with Excession and tPoG, UoW is the piece that defined the author for me. And it is still a unique novel to this date in its execution and appeal to myself.

Quite frankly, I believe Use of Weapons to be one of the finest novels ever written. I haven't read everything by Banks, but Use of Weapons is the piece which I would say fully encompases his talent.

Not to mention his fondness for Really nasty twists at the end that make ESB look mild by comparison.

At any rate, for starter books "Player of Games" worked best for me, Excession works great due to the more classic "space opera" of its setting (treachery, evil sadist noble tentacle empires, giant ships from beyond the ken of the known universe, etc') and being easy to follow.
Use of Weapons is undoubtably his best book, and indeed, one of the finest books I have ever read.

[fusion]

My order was Use of Weapons, Player of the Games (simple read), Excession, Consider Phlebas, Look to Windward, and lastly State of the Art ( I just didn't like how he deliberately made grammar errors to imitate the character's writing style). Anyways, all the books besides State of the Art were excellent.

[His Divine Shadow]

I quite liked Matter for the settings and mindsets of the "barbaric" people, interesting to see them in such settings. The ending dissapointed however, but eh.

Excession I liked for the Affront, though I found it somewhat confusing in places.

Player of Games was quite good from beginning to end however.

Consider Phlebas made me hate the main character but an interesting setting where it wasn't just über machines and utopias coming out of the ass.

Look to Windward was okay but really damn boring in places.

I haven't read use of weapons yet.

[Big Orange]

Unlike many I was reasonably happy with the sudden conclusion to Matter and it didn't just drift off like Excession did. It was not as if all the events surrounding the manipulative Oct and their Sarl patsies was not a big build up to something awful.

[Dahak]

I might be a heretic, but I never very much got "into" Banks.
Excession was ok-ish, but it didn't feel all that gripping. I tried The Algebraist afterwards, which I liked a lot more, but still felt not quite right to me.
After those two, I don't have a burning need to read other books of Banks. His style and way of telling does not seem to correlate well with me.
I rather read Simmons or Hamilton...

[Starglider]

The three best ones are Excession, Use of Weapons and Consider Phlebas, and I can't really chose between them. Excession is excellent, mainly because it is a good 'high concept' epic sci-fi novel that is actually pleasant to read - the pacing is fast and there are no stretches of poor characterisation and blatant exposition to toil through. In this sense it is rather like 'A Fire Upon The Deep'. Consider Phlebas is just really fun to read; the lead character is a genuine magnificant bastard. Use of Weapons is a stunningly sophisticated piece of storytelling and characterisation. All of them have great world-building.

Player of Games and Against a Dark Background are very good but their relatively limited scope leave them somewhat in the shade of the first three. PoG just didn't seem to have the sheer density of interesting ideas that the other books do. AaDB did, but the execution was lackluster somehow - I didn't connect with the characters as much as usual. Feersum Enjin is in the same class but I have an inexplicable personal affection for it.

Look to Windward and Matter were competent and interesting but had serious pacing issues. Specifically, they had huge long tracts of the major characters doing nothing much. Matter in particular had an overly compressed and somewhat unsatisfying ending; nothing wrong with the actual plot (well, perhaps it was a little by-the-numbers by Banks standards, all the individual elements had been seen before in earlier novels), just that the grand finale seemed to need about 20 pages more than it actually got. I haven't read The State of the Art yet.

So my personal ranking is;
1) Excession
2) Use of Weapons
3) Consider Phlebas
4) Feersum Enjinn
5) Player of Games
6) Look to Windward
7) Against a Dark Background
Matter

But Matter is still a good book.

[Ohma]

Well I've only read Excession, Consider Phlebas, and Player of Games so far (in that order), and I've only just started Use of Weapons, but here are my thoughts.

Excession: A very good space opera-y Culture-verse book. The Affront were a delightful mix of post TOS Klingon-esque OTT cartoonish brutality and genuinely horrific cultural norms (which made it disturbingly easy to see why the conspirators chose to start the war).
I wouldn't recommend it as a book to introduce people to the rest of the Culture-verse books, it simply takes for granted that you already know a few more things than it should for an introductory book.

Consider Phlebas: I really like that while the Idirans are never shown to be right in their beliefs, or even a very sympathetic species, the Culture is simultaneously not shown to be the paragons of all that is right and good in the universe. Granted, they are shown in a much more sympathetic light than the Idirans, and are in fact shown to be down right better than what anyone else in the galaxy is presented as in the book, but Kri...err no...uhh...crap can't find my copy ATM, well, main character dude, does have a point.
Additionally, I for some reason found Kraiklyn's obviously doomed "Free Company" extremely hilarious. ("Easy in, easy out", "Nah, the boat's thousands of kilometers from the wall, don't mind that ominously thick fog bank", "I can flyyyyyyyyyyyy-"*splat*, "YOU LEFT ME BEHIND YOU ASSHOLES!!!" *boom*...maybe I'm just a bad person? ) I'd recommend this book as a starter, if the person I was recommending it to was more of a 'grey area' person, and didn't mind slightly smaller (in scope) sci-fi stories.

Player of Games: The description of this book makes it sound like it is made of massive amounts of fail. Thankfully it isn't. I did like that (aside from being brilliant at playing games) the main character was more or less normal (for the Culture) and as such, a lot of the stuff he witnesses in Azad end up being distorted (well, even more so since the narrator isn't the main character, or omniscient) and passed off as something innocuous until it's either explained to him by someone else, or something bad happens that puts everything else into a new, kind of upsetting, light.

[Big Orange]

I'm up to page 305 of Against a Dark Background; I still put it in the 'Classic' category, but I've heard about people saying the ending sucks. I've grown to really like the Golter setting, even if it is comparatively small scale in comparison to the more epic, alien settings of the Culture and Mercatoria.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

I found Consider Phlebas to be too unfocused to enjoy. It started out as a space opera type of story and then became more of an Oddyssey style story where the main character is wandering around on a quest, and eventually everything started to feel pointless. I'll have to read another culture story before I pick it back up, because it certainly wasn't a very good book for introducing me to the Culture.

[Crazedwraith]

I've read: Use of Weapons, Consider Phleabas, Against a Dark Background and Player of Games. (In that order)

And I have to say I'm never really sure why I get another M Banks novel. The setting and universe are all very well done and interesting but the plots never seem to click for me.

Anyway out of those four, I think Player of Games would have to be the best. Possibly for the reason its the only book where it would be worth being the main character at the end.

I mean, Hoza dies, Zakalwie's dying and Sharrow's alone on a beach with eveyrthing she's ever had destroyed and everyone she's ever known has been killed

Player's the only one with a decent ending in my opinion.

[andrewgpaul]

... and Sharrow's alone on a beach with eveyrthing she's ever had destroyed and everyone she's ever known has been killed

The epilogue does cheer up a bit.

[Big Orange]

I've finished Against a Dark Background and I felt the book was getting silly storywise after that really cool segment in that impressive underground desert complex belonging to some paramilitary faction (codenamed the Keep) which was something straight out of James Bond and Austin Powers. In fact there was another segment in a mining complex on a gas giant's moon that was very remaniscent of Ken Adam.