The Culture is a galaxy-spanning civilization that has tapped our protagonist (a famous game-player) to go play the game that is the central organizing concept of another younger, smaller, cruder empire. The societal details are interesting (and repugnant in the case of the newbies) and we get to see our protagonist be changed and influenced by events. The notion that starships and robots are sentient and are full citizens in the Culture can have humorous drawbacks. I didn't really like the protagonist and the story resolution wasn't sufficient to overcome that problem for me. While there was nothing wrong with the character names within the context of the story, they were so odd and baroque that they repeatedly threw me out of the story and made it difficult to re-engage. Your mileage may vary.