Consider Phlebas: to what extent was Horza being manipulated by the Culture minds?
Hi, I'm new to this subreddit, but I have been a big fan of Iain Banks' Culture series since I was a teenager.
I just recommended Consider Phlebas as a book to try in a sci-fi book club that I'm taking part in. No-one else in the group has read any of the Culture series before, and a discussion came up as to what extent Horza was being manipulated by the Culture minds throughout the book.
To me, it seems quite plausible that Horza was being used by the minds all along, as a tool to achieve their goal of retrieving the lost mind. The ending seems highly convenient for the Culture, that despite things deteriorating into quite a messy gun/train fight, Balveda is ultimately the only person that emerges unscathed from the train tunnels with the lost mind recovered and ready to return to the Culture. It also seems highly convenient that she and her drone were part of Horza's group that were able to gain access to Schar's World. So, the ending seems to perhaps be intended to show the subtle manipulative powers of the minds - that even in such a messy situation, they were able to use their predictive calculations and subtle influence to help tilt things towards a conclusion that was favorable for them. I.e. Horza and his ship were deliberately allowed to escape from the GSV; Balveda was planted on purpose, as an agent to help influence things on the ground.
It also seems to tie in with the very interesting choice to choose a main character for his first Culture book who is an enemy of the culture and philosophically opposed to it. My take on this is that, as well as Phlebas giving something of a 'tour' of his universe, he also wanted to demonstrate the subtle manipulative powers of the Culture minds. And the best way he could think of to do that was to put the reader in the shoes of a character who was an enemy of the Culture, but was nevertheless being manipulated by it, as a hapless pawn to unwittingly do their bidding. So, the point of the book is partly to give the reader a sense of what it is like to be manipulated and used by these super-intelligent AI beings (which to me seems quite clever and subtle).
I'm just wondering if this makes sense and whether other people who are familiar with the books would agree with this interpretation.