The Player of Games

Jernau Gurgeh is the Culture's finest game player, bored with a post-scarcity utopia that has nothing left to challenge him, until Contact's Special Circumstances offers him a subtly coerced trip to the Empire of Azad. There, an entire civilization organizes its politics, its succession, even its cruelty around a single game of terrifying complexity, and Gurgeh's skill at play becomes a weapon aimed at empire itself. The second published Culture novel.