This was my fluff read between "serious" books and... I don't know it just left me a little cold. Maybe it was the way Banks seemed to dislike every one of his characters or how the protagonist not only did NOT have an arc but seemed to be written in a completely different way in the back third of the story. All characters trended towards caricature. Granted, this was just a fun space opera but I got the impression both from other fans of the novel as well as the writer himself that Consider Phlebas aspired to be something more. Taken as a disposable piece of fluffy entertainment it was fine. Taken as anything more and I'd consider it a failure.