Consider Phlebas

I wasn't taken with my first Iain Banks book, The Wasp Factory. We read it for book club, so I did not plan on reading him again. However, someone mentioned that his science fiction was markedly different and I should give Consider Phlebas a try.
It didn't turned out well. The writing style is not terribly strong and the story is substantially worse. The problem with the plot seems to be the same as The Wasp Factory: pacing. There isn't really a lot of structure and too much time is spent on irrelevant side stories. I was never actually engaged in the book.
It wasn't all bad though. The author invented an interesting futuristic game (eg, The Glass Bead Game) and the war setting was reasonable. Nevertheless, this is the type of useless action novel that really ruins the name of science fiction for the public.