Consider Phlebas: A Culture Novel (The Culture)

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Proud Warrior Race Guy: The Idirans hold firm religious beliefs in fighting to the death. For example: Consider Phlebas, first published in 1987, is a space opera novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks. It is the first in a series of novels about an interstellar post-scarcity society called the Culture. Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Fal N'geestra is an adventurous young Thrill Seeker who enjoys climbing mountains without safety equipment — and also happens to be a Referer, one of an infinitesimally small number of the Culture's citizens who hold some form of precognitive ability allowing them to occasionally outsmart the Minds. This can almost literally be compared to outwitting God, making her an extreme case of Smarter Than They Look. This is useful as an introduction to the CULTURE, but not necessary. The plot is often exciting and there are some awesome set pieces which would make a great movie, but there are no characters to root for (they seem to be created as anti-heroes) and the plot, which feels incohesive, takes much too long to accomplish. There are also fewer of the “big ideas” I’ve come to expect from Banks. I would love to see this condensed and produced as a movie. It was the Culture’s fault. It considered itself too civilized and sophisticated to hate its enemies; instead it tried to understand them and their motives, so that it could out-think them and so that, when it won, it would treat them in a way which ensured they would not become enemies again. The”

Death World: An unseen example is the Idiran homeworld, which has caused them to evolve into badass warriors.Failure Hero: Horza is a Failure Anti-Hero— barring his miraculous escape from The Ends Of Invention, almost everything he sets out to do goes horribly wrong... And it usually isn't even his fault, either. Horza dies soon after Balveda gets him to the surface and the Mind is returned to the Culture. In an epilogue, the Mind becomes a starship, and reveals its name to be Bora Horza Gobuchul.

Horza is an Idiran spy, and his unfortunate state is a consequence of being caught impersonating a high-ranking government official—he murdered the original, which is apparently Horza’s standard operating procedure—on a Culture-allied planet called Sorpen. (Sorpen is run by a “gerontocracy”, a ruling body entirely composed of elderly men. Typical Banks: this interesting idea, which might have formed a setting for a whole other novel, is used, noted, and never dealt with again.) Shapeshifting: An interesting, relatively "hard" example: Horza's species was genetically engineered to have a limited (but still useful, for a spy) ability to shape-shift. Horza can take on the appearance of another person, and eventually replace them. This is a complex, lengthy process in which the physical structure of Horza's face and body are gradually altered by his specialized biology. Shapeshifter Baggage and other common shape-shifting tropes are averted. It’s not clear if Banks actually anticipated that his CULTURE series would eventually extend to 10 volumes, and mark him as a very literary and subversive practitioner of the SF genre, one who could be popular with a certain devoted fan base while at the same time thumbing his nose at the more low-brow wish-fulfillment aspects of space opera. Mostly likely he didn’t. The Jinmoti of Bozlen Two kill the hereditary ritual assassins of the new Yearking's immediate family by drowning them in the tears of the Continental Empathaur in its Sadness Season.” Villain Protagonist: Horza is vehemently opposed to the Culture, which is of course the "heroes" of the series and which comes across even in this book as a lot more sympathetic than the Scary Dogmatic Aliens that Horza is trying to help fight them. However, aside from a few brief point-of-view chapters from Culture characters, the book is all about Horza's trials and tribulations as he tries to capture a Culture Mind for Idiran study. He ultimately fails and dies, though he does get recognised as a Worthy Opponent by his victorious enemies.Gerald Jonas in The New York Times praised the sophistication of Banks' writing and said "he asks readers to hold in mind a great many pieces of a vast puzzle while waiting for a pattern to emerge". Jonas suggested the ending might appear to rely too much on a deus ex machina. [2] 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.