September 19, 2001 (12:00 AM) ( link )

For those who care: I'm about a third of the way through Iain M. Banks's Player of Games. I should be finished with it in a few days. The book is pretty good: not quite as many fun action sequences as in Consider Phlebas, but Banks starts to make the Culture much more interesting, and the characters are slowly coming into their own (although, as in Consider Phlebas, their development begins inauspiciously enough). The beginning is very slow, but it's starting to pick up. I have heard that this is one of the best of Banks's Culture novels, so hopefully there will soon be some of the plot twists and edge-of-the-seat storytelling that Banks is famed for.