**Typical Action Movie Book **
Picking up a popular scifi book is a roll of the dice. Sometimes, through pure luck you find exceptional ideas or a riveting plot. Often, you’ll find a commentary on our modern civilization through examination of a different perspective. Yet the other half, you roll mediocre, and get white male boomer wish-fulfillment instead.
Consider Phlebas is in the latter category. I’m the target audience, so don’t mind reading a space-adventure. Nothing was egregious enough to set this book down and go back to reading about the Vietnam War. But by the end, nothing stood out as anything more than a GPT4 remix of other scifi novels.
Hero escapes doomed ship, finds then leads a motley crew of mercenaries, has a liaison with one of the female mercenaries, uses ship weapons inside a space station to break out, takes prisoners to advance the plot. All serviceable, but I’ll take a re-roll.
** 26th book of 2023 **