The Player of Games

This is an installment from the Cultures series about a benevolent culture of intelligent robots. Gurgeh is a human, a professor about games. He is sent to the society of Azad that is build around a game of the same name, that is "as complex as life". Some reviews said that the descriptions of the games and their moves are too abstract but actually how would you make up a game as complex as this one and explain every detailed move to the reader? I think that would be boring. Explaining the situation, like attacking the enemy forces or defending and holding ground for me was the right kind of explanation and leave the details to my imagination. I mean, it said it is a board game with cards, highly complex and there are different boards, so I imagine a landscape, buildings, people etc. What It wanted to say is that I enjoyed this exploring of the Azadian culture and can greatly recommend it if you are into Science Fiction.