The novel works on many levels - as a story line, as a set of believable characters, and as a created world of its own. Read this years ago: an absolute classic of sciFi. If this book were a movie would you go see it? He makes the listening very interesting, and rarely if ever gets the sense of a sentence wrong. His capacity for different voices and accents, consistently maintained is very impressive. More of a sense by the end of why we should have been interested in the book How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable? He just didn't know where his story was leading at least within this book. But it doesn't stand alone.Granted, this was one of his first books, written nearly 40 years ago, but it's not that the technology is dated. It goes off like a damp squibb.Ok, this is the first in the series, and others say later books are better and this is necessary background. It's like he was a chess player who learnt a lot about openings but had no experience in end games. But this one tales off badly, despite some good ideas. I read another book of his which is very good. I enjoyed the adventure through their universe and the questions they raised. I think this author has alot of great ideas when it comes to thought experiments and universe building. You don't take someone with that level of education and professionalism and then make them surprised/misunderstand the very things they were raised and trained to understand out of nowhere.

The epilogue having to do with the characters was just complete and utter nonsense. Its like they all knew they were side characters, just accepted it or something and didn't bother to break the mold. Peoples actions and thoughts were wholly railroaded the entire book pulled along by the single character that apparently actually had free will: The main character. Its characters are like 2 dimensions pieces of inconsistent paper with not just no coherent thought processes, but with like.

It has large world that makes alot of sense and is very interesting (3rd Dimension). Missing Its 2nd Dimension So Totally It Breaks

Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks