I tried reading Consider Phlebas and was too bored to finish it and now I’ve seen a bunch of posts about how it’s a terrible entry point into the series.
So, internet people, where should I start with the Culture series?
“Look to the Windward” is my favorite.
I remember absolutely nothing about Phlebas, Player of games was pretty good, can’t get through Use of Weapons, should I read further?
I mean they aren’t a series. I couldn’t even begin to tell you the order if they were.
They are very good explorations of “what sort of conflict and drama can there be in a Utopian society.”
L2W deals with death in a society where death is entirely a matter of choice. It’s beautiful.
Excision is an excellent discussion of how to deal with problems like FAI and comet impacts that might destroy your world, but you are incapable of ever understanding.
I recall not liking UoW much myself, but I can’t recall anything concrete that promises other books will have “less of the bad stuff, more of the good stuff.”
The one thing I can say is that he’s a very consistent writer, such that you can crack open the Amazon Free Sample of a book, see if it engages you within the first few pages, and drop it if it doesn’t. You’re not waiting for some sort of development that makes the early parts retroactively good (a la Babylon 5.)
I know they aren't a series, the question is whether every book further on is this weird literary experiment that is read backwards and forwards but the characters are so boring and bland that it doesn’t matter.