A space game that’s not Ender’s.

This is one of those books that has just kind of stuck with me.  The story arc is straightforward and not super exciting on the surface: man who is good at playing games plays a really hard game. The writing wasn’t bombastic; I wasn’t marveling at all the well-turned phrases.  I didn’t particularly care for the main character until about halfway through, and the only other characters I sort of cared about were the droids.  But…it has taken me about three weeks to sit down and write this review because I just kept thinking about it–it kind of got under my skin.  It’s a clever book.

Jernau Morat Gurgeh plays games. He’s very, very good at games. When he’s not playing games, he’s living happily in the Culture, an advanced, post-scarcity civilization. Droids/AIs perform administrative and government roles and generally just help out their humanoids who, basically, do what they want. There are no laws and, since they have unlimited resources, few motives for conflict. They have glands with which they can release certain drugs for certain effects at will; they can switch sexes; they can pursue whatever occupation pleases them.  Life is good in the Culture.

But early on we learn about at least one reason for conflict: blackmail. Well, make that two: other planets/humanoids/galaxies who aren’t evolved enough to live happy, resource-heavy, conflict-free lives. Azad, a very distant empire, is one of those places.

Through some machinations by the Culture’s governing bodies, Gurgeh is invited to the Empire of Azad, home to the most intense, complicated, sophisticated game that Gurgeh has ever beheld. Azadians learn it from birth–they live and breathe it; it determines elections; it can mean life or death. After a little persuading, Gurgeh agrees to make the journey and play the game.  And he slowly realizes that basically no one has been (or is being) totally honest with him about this mission.

Banks has a great way of world building without explicitly world building.  You’re thrown into the story, and you’ll figure it out–he gives just enough information so that you do, and you hardly notice.  By the time we get to Azad, we’re already thinking like Gurgeh.  We “get” the Culture, and we understand how alien Azad and its planet, Ea, are to him and his Culture sensibilities.

The Empire of Azad and its planet, Ea, are quite obviously commentaries on Earth, or, specifically, human empires and capitalism.  Sometimes this feels heavy-handed; for instance, when Gurgeh’s trusty droid advises him that:

It is especially important to remember that the ownership of humans is possible too [in Azad]; not in terms of actual slavery, which they are proud to have abolished, but in the sense that, according to which sex and class one belongs to, one may be partially owned by another or others by having to sell one’s labour or talents to somebody with the means to buy them…

On the other hand…touché.

The second half of the book flew by for me, with the game in full swing and Gurgeh and his acquaintances (certainly he doesn’t have real friends in Azad) move through the game, raising the stakes with each round.  The parallels between Ea and Earth become more obvious, but Banks balances out any discomfort that might elicit in the reader by making the plot more intense and bizarre, bringing it to a satisfying finale.