this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
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Peter F Hamilton: Nights Dawn Trilogy
Ian M Banks: Culture Series
+1 for The Culture. If op liked Old Man's War they'll love The Culture.
Not necessarily. I loved OMW but something about the Culture novels just rubbed me the wrong way. I read the first two books and gave up. They were okay, but I didn't enjoy them enough to want to read any more.
I found that Banks’ writing can be… boring? There is a certain simplicity in it that can rub me the wrong way.
This should not be a reason NOT to read the books, as I found them to be simple reads with amazing concepts.
Consider Phlebas is a great read as it’s told from the perspective of someone unfamiliar with the Culture and is exposed to it at a distance.
Other books in the series put you front and centre in the Culture and it can be overwhelming.
Some of his books don’t even mention the culture, but you know it’s operating under a veil in front of the reader the entire time.
It’s all really quite genius.
I didn't find Banks' writing to be particularly boring. The plot in Consider Phlebas was interesting enough for me to finish the book, at least.
The Player of Games was a big letdown, though. Similarly to the first book, the plot was interesting enough. But by time I got to the end, I realized: I just wasn't having fun. I didn't particularly care about the protagonist, and I wasn't impressed with the way he was characterized. Just, overall...meh. It doesn't resonate for me.
I’ve read most of the series and I would say this is my experience with half of it.
Some books are bangers others are flops. But overall the entire thing is worth reading for the universe he presents.
Hmm, it has been a while since I read them. Maybe I should put the next one in the series on hold at the library.
So. To save you some time, none of them need to be read in order (although Consider Phlebas is the best starting point), the books I recommend are:
Use of Weapons, Excession, Look to Windward, Matter, Surface Detail
…. Wait. You know, I just looked at a list of the Culture novels and realized I HAVE read them all except Surface Detail(which I am currently reading and enjoy) and honestly Player of Games is the weakest of the lot followed by Hydrogen Sonata.
You really did stop reading right as it gets really good. Use of Weapons and Excession especially open up the world and really start pushing cool concepts.
Thanks for the suggestions! It does help to hear from another person who considered Player of Games as a low point. I'll see how Use of Weapons hits me.
Night's Dawn was so immensely frustrating. He revisits some of the same ideas in later books to much better effect IMO and skips over some of the terrible stuff.
Tap for spoiler
The biological starships were great but then we have the ghost of Al Capone possessing a body and leading a war against unpossessed humanity? That was fucking awful.The Culture is nothing but gold though. Recently revisited Inversions and it's still amazing.
To each their own, I enjoyed the trilogy as an excellent mixture of drastically hard sci-fi mixed with delusional fantasy.
I do agree that he perfected concepts in further books, but also found he didn’t particularly deviate from those ideas in truly meaningful ways.
For example: The Great North Road did an excellent job at mixing portals and biological science fiction, but that concepts like brain computer interfaces remained largely the same and too familiar despite being a distinctly separate universe. It felt repeated and old hat.
Good book nonetheless, I was just a bit disappointed he rehashed the same ideas without deviation or too much expansion.
I read Great North Road and several other of his books before I read Nights Dawn, so those "repeated" ideas added to my frustration with the trilogy. Had I read them the other way around, I bet that would changed my opinion some.
Have you read Exodus yet? I have it on my shelf but have been in the mood for shorter reads lately.
I haven’t, but I’ve also found that I prefer his earlier works. The Void Trilogy is another good opera.
I’ll tack on here: if OP doesn’t want to commit to 2500 pages of trilogy: the first book I read by Hamilton was Fallen Dragon.
It uses some concepts familiar with his other works, but presents them in very different ways, and the overall novel is shortish.
The use of semi biological power armor throughout is honestly super cool.