The novel takes its title from a line in T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land: O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

Throughout the book there is a subplot about a Culture ethologist named Uagen Zlepe spending his time on a distant alien air sphere and discovering hints about the Chelgrian plot to destroy the Masaq' Orbital's Hub Mind.

He attempts to warn the Culture, and the reader is led to believe that his intervention is the reason why the Mind knew about Quilan's sabotage, but ultimately he fails to get his message out and dies.

His dead body is resurrected using alien technology an entire galactic grand cycle later, long after all the events of the story have ended.

Back in the present, the Chelgrian admiral Huyler's personality, kept alive from Quilan's Soulkeeper, and the real source of the Mind's foreknowledge regarding the attack, is given a new body and becomes an ambassador to the Culture, enjoying a very high standard of living.

Eliot poem which the novel takes its name from is, in part: Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and loss.

Phil Daoust in The Guardian said the story was an "enjoyable romp" and described Quilan as "one of the misguided yet decent villains who are a feature of these [Culture] tales".

[1] Gerald Jonas in The New York Times praised the sophistication of Banks' writing and said "he asks readers to hold in mind a great many pieces of a vast puzzle while waiting for a pattern to emerge".