Consider Phlebas

There are the beginnings of brilliance here, but I can already tell (having only read [b:Look to Windward 12016 Look to Windward (Culture, #7) Iain M. Banks http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1288930978s/12016.jpg 124371] before this) that it is not the best of the Culture novels.Vastly imaginative in scale, skillfully described; a seemingly straightforward space opera that nonetheless holds some unexpected twists and an unusual complexity in its characters and their relationships (to each other and to the world in which they live). But balance that with some serious nightmare fuel (there are several scenes in the book that are distressingly and gratuitously graphic, and I would not want to read again), the overall bleakness of the message, and some downright depressing events that happen at the end...I'd say this is a good book, but it's not light reading, and not something I especially want to read again – especially given that I know I can revisit the fantastic world in which the Culture exists without revisiting this particular story.