Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
That is why, of course, you should always start a series with the second or third book. Otherwise you might miss out on a great series. You can always circle back once you’re hooked.
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Of course I did (by chance): my first was _The Player of Games_. If JSWolf had done that he would have found that this "series" is a bit of a misnomer: the universe is shared between books, but a total of one character recurs between books (and she only appears in two and possibly the epilogue of one other); some books are so tangentially "in the series" that you have to read between the lines a bit to figure out that they're even set in the same universe. So the rather grim and driven characters in _Consider Phlebas_ do not recur. (In fact it's hard to see how anyone could read CP and not come to that conclusion because very few of them survive the ending, and most of those are described in the epilogue as being dead by the time the epilogue was written).
The grim scenario in CP is also left far in the past: this is the only SF book he wrote that took place in wartime. The other books are quite a lot happier. Mostly. (_Matter_ is pretty grim too, in a quite different way). It's a universe in which the author was quite explicit that he would like to live (as would I, frankly), and that's not something you get if it's all as unremittingly bleak as _Consider Phlebas_.
I'll admit I do not reread _Consider Phlebas_ very often, nor _Matter_, nor _Against a Dark Background_. _Use of Weapons_, _The Player of Games_, _The State of the Art_ and _Excession_, on the other hand...