In the wake of Iain Banks announcing that he has terminal cancer, I decided to exorcise my melancholy by indulging in fond nostalgia, so I wrote a Tor.com post about, well, "Eff Yeah The Culture." In the spirit of that, & reposting it here so that I have a permanent record of it, I thought it might be a good idea to link to the Culture novel index of my previous reviews & thumbnail all the ones I've read so far, since it...looks like this will be a complete list, short stories not included. I thought about ranking them, but it seems sort of pointless. I recommend reading Player of Games first, & I think Surface Detail is my favorite, though I don't think you can really jump right into it. Or, I take that back. You certainly can-- these aren't serial, they don't need to be read in order. I just think the more you read, the broader your enjoyment of the series will be, &Surface Detail is a pretty high functioning one. You really need to find the idea of a psychopathic Culture warship hilarious before you can appreciate all the nuance of...well, the sense of humor that a sociopathic Culture battleship has.
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Consider Phlebas by Iain Banks.
Player of Games by Iain Banks.
Use of Weapons by Iain Banks.
Matter by Iain M. Banks.
Inversions by Iain Banks.
Excession by Iain M. Banks.
Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks.
The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks.