Feersum Endjinn and The Bridge are fascinating but, yeah, work. Excession IME is fine for people -if- they've read several other Culture novels first. Having i

Feersum Endjinn and The Bridge are fascinating but, yeah, work. Excession IME is fine for people -if- they've read several other Culture novels first. Having it be somebody's first one tends to be ... suboptimal, at best. Inversions is also weird in that it feels a bit empty ... -unless- you know to read it as a novel about SC agents, and then it's far more interesting. The rest of the sci-fi ones seem reasonably grokkable, the non-sci-fi ones really depend on whether you get into the style or not, I think.