The player of games

With the middle initial of Iain M. Banks, the famous author of "The Wasp Factory", "The Raven Road", "The Business", "Despair Street" and other novels beloved by the domestic reader, not for the faint of heart, publishes his science fiction. "The Player" is the second book of the famous cycle about the Culture, the standard of intellectual space opera of a new type; the action of the novel takes place several hundred years after the events of "Remember Phlebas" - a science fiction debut comparable in power only to "Hyperion" by Dan Simmons. Jerno Morath Gurgeh - a famous player, one of the most powerful specialists in various games in the entire Cultural civilization - is forced to agree to the offer of the Special Circumstances Department and go to the distant empire of Azad, to play the game that gave the empire its name and determines its entire bizarre system, its entire aggressive policy. Now the empire fears not only that Gurgeh might win (after all, the winner of the final round becomes the new emperor), but also the very manner of his play, which reflects the anarcho-hedonistic way of life of the Culture...