Excession

Tedious, barely managed to finish it. Confusing plot. Impossible to follow characters with names like "Frank Exchange Of Views", "Byr Genar-Hofoen", and "Killing Time". (Exception: "Meatfucker", a name which is both evocative and well explained in the book.) Also the characters themselves are terrible. The Minds are free of needing to be nuanced of course, by virtue of being AI, but the human characters are equally unappealing and unsympathetic. And then there's some elaborate space opera plot woven through multiple chapters with shifting viewpoints, a technique I find increasingly tiresome but am willing to go along with.. If the narrative holds together, which this didn't particularly. No particular payoff at the end either. (Spoiler: the Big Bad turns out to be just a McGuffin.)

I didn't much care for Player of Games, either. I think that may be it for me and Culture novels.