Consider Phlebas
- 471
- Pages
- about 9 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“Consider Phlebas” opens the Culture series with space opera on a grand scale: inventive worlds, narrow escapes and a real sense that actions carry consequences. Some readers find that the plot wanders through long detours and dense descriptions of ships and hardware, and one gruesome episode strikes some as gratuitous. It rewards those who plan to continue with the series more than anyone looking for a tight, self-contained adventure.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
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.
Reading order · Culture series
Full order & progress →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.3 across 985 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 87% of the weight and the score stays at 7.4 — the Science fiction average of 7.8 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.2 | 105 | 11% |
| Hardcover | 7.3 | 880 | 89% |
Frequently asked
How long is Consider Phlebas?
It has 471 pages — longer than 60% of the ranked books in Science fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Science fiction — with scores between 7.3 and 7.4, closest to this book.
