Consider Phlebas: 1 (Culture)

It's a testament to Peter Kenny's performance that all the increasingly bizarre names sound entirely normal. Also, he creates characterizations so distinctly that stretches in which no speaker is identified are easily understood. He really cuts loose in his portrayal of the cannibalistic Eater holy man, who speaks, it seems, through a dripping patina of mucous and sweat.

Banks demonstrates a talent for suspense in a new wave sf novel that should appeal to fans of space adventure.

Imaginative and gripping.

There is now no British SF writer to whose work I look forward with greater keenness.

The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction-cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.

Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.