14. The Player of Games - Iain M. Banks

The second book of Iain M. Banks’s Culture series, is startlingly different from the first one. The first, told from the viewpoint of someone outside the Culture, who hates it, was a rousing and crazy space opera. This book is instead a ‘comedy of manners.’

It follows the adventures of a Culture man whose entire existence revolves around playing games. Any game, any challenge, he will take on. So when Special Circumstances asks him to travel to another civilization and represent the Culture in a game that is the major be all and end of of that world, he agrees.

Fascinating world building, complex characterization, and terrifically detailed ideas on the clash between two worldviews that are entirely at odds and struggling to understand each other.