Honestly, I’m having kind of a hard time with Consider Phlebas. It has elements I really enjoy, but these elements keep getting bogged down in (imo) clumsy writing and kind of awful dialog.

There have been really stellar scenes. Like the opening scene that introduces Horza, and a later scene with Horza on an island. But largely I’m just finding it okay.

I’m powering through because I’ve heard really good things about the Culture series, and I hope the subsequent books get better for me, but it may just be that Iain M. Banks is not for me.

As for The Space Between Worlds, I’m really enjoying it. It’s a portal fantasy, which I generally enjoy anyway, but this one has a sense of melancholy desperation that is working really well for me. It’s also dystopian, which is pretty topical considering, y’know, everything.

The premise is also pretty cool, in that you can’t travel to another dimension/earth where your alternate self is still alive, and you can’t travel to dimensions/earths that are too divergent from the “prime” earth that the story takes place in.