Consider Phlebas was my third Culture novel after Use of Weapons and Player of Games. I very much enjoyed it, but definitely didn't enjoy the Island cult bit!
Its a acquired taste.. it was a fascinating insight though, into a luxurious, post-scarcity societies tolerance for extremes, as long as they all did what they did out of choice, not even a machine could overrule them.
I love, how the tragic choices of the "organics" are mirrored hinted as part of the PTSD of the orbital in "Look to the winward", which can "relive" the destruction of orbitals, ships and worlds in the idiran war in perfect detail. It could have zapped the mindstates of the mortals, like the meat-fucker (Sleeper Service), but choose to not do so out of respect for the choices.
The whole book part of the orbital, was a careful flashed out testing of the extremes of a highly hedonistic, machine governed society thrown in a "culture" war against religious zealots and it explored those themes well.
Reread, you are absolutely right. Shame. I mixed up a machine that is mostly engine and dioramas with a machine that is mostly brainscans and genocide-drama.
This is a consistent complaint I have about that whole series. Banks clearly enjoys writing action sequences, and is very good at it, and they are a poor fit for the stories of the series. They're tonally out of place with the setting, throw off the pacing, and require extravagant plot contortions to allow for them.
Booo! Banks loves writing action sequences and some of us love to read them. If you want to read "brainy" sci-fi you can always someone else like, like... Olaf Stapledon? Or Alfred Bester?
But the Culutre has drones armed with knife missiles armed with micromissiles armed with miniature jedi ninjas with chainswords shooting death rays from their eyes. So there.
I've read most (all of them? Except Feersum Endjinn, it was just too hard to read to enjoy it - but that's me) and I do think Banks has a lot of violent and sometimes gruesome parts. The Archimandrite Luseferous springs to mind (not part of the culture series, more an anti-culture book, it feels like the mirror universe in Star Trek, E.g. in DS9, but it's so culture-like, I include it).
Yes. Interesting question. I’d say that in terms of the goriness of the writing, the island is particularly bad.
Thematically though, in terms of the series overall, violence, oppression, genocide, torture, are all fairly common, although not as gruesomely depicted for the most part.