Leila Anani's Reviews > The Player of Games

** spoiler alert ** I'm clearly missing something. Pretty much across the board I've heard rave reviews for The Player of Games and I have to confess I really struggled with it - it's rare for me to take over a month to read a single book that isn't a tome, but this one did.

It follows Culture agent and game player extraordinaire Jurnau Morat Gurgeh. Bored with his comfortable life in the culture he allows himself to become manipulated and gets sent out to play the most complex game ever created against the Empire of Azad - where the prize is Emperorship if you can stay alive long enough.

Nothing much happens at all - the action (the final game) all takes place in the last 1/4 of the book - but is so slow! Gurgeh introduced. Gurgeh gets sent to the Empire, Gurgeh plays the Game. Everything explodes. Gurgeh goes home. The end. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen.

To be fair there are some superb horrific scenes - which elevates this from a one to a two star rating. The hunt turned my stomach and the depiction of the Azad culture with its three sexes (Male, Female, Apex) and its face for the masses and then the secret cruelty for the ruling elite - reminded me of David Cronenberg's videodrome - Fascinating and sickening. The Culture clash and world building is definitely this novel's saving grace.

The other issue I really struggled with in this one was character. Horza in Consider Phlebas is sympathetic and 'human' - In fact I warmed to all the characters in that one - which was very much from a human POV. Even the aliens were likeable. I can't think of a single character in Player I liked or was rooting for, Gurgeh is thoroughly unlikable from the outset - And while he does change I never sympathised with him, except to see him as preferable to the Apices of Azad. This one's from the Culture POV which is alien in its own right and i failed to find any real point of emotional connection with the characters or the story. Other than perhaps the old house drone Chamlis I had no sympathy for the machine minds and actively hated the manipulative Mawhrin Skel.

I think perhaps a lot of the subtleties went over my head because I really couldn't see any point to this at all. The idea of games as real life worked far better in things like Ender's Game. The allegory was largely lost on me - I have no idea what lesson Gurgeh learned (other than perhaps to appreciate what he has, and that games are dangerous) and I was left with a feeling of 'is that it?'

Memorable for the horror sequences, but over all this one did very little for me.