Novel about incompetent space pirates

Question

I remembered only some bizarre details about this novel.

Space pirates that are really incompetent, they try to steal some stuff from an enormous ship on an enormous space habitat... This ship is actually an oceangoing vessel on an artificial ocean? Somehow screws it up even when everything is abandoned, because everything will be blown up because of a war that is in the background, I think. Then ends up on an artificial island? With cannibals...

Just remembered this bizarre stuff, sure I read it around 2001, so published before this date. Pretty sure was a novel, not a short story.

Answer 1

It sounds like you're think of Consider Phlebas (1987), Iain M. Banks' first novel of the Culture.

The protagonist is Horza, who is actually fighting for the Idirans against the Culture; he is a limited shape-changer and acting as a spy.

After one of his missions goes wrong he is picked up by the Clear Air Turbulence, a pirate vessel taking advantage of the war to prey on both sides.

As you note, though, they're not very good at it, and several of their missions go wrong, leaving several of the crew dead.

The climax of the novel takes place on the Vavatch Orbital, which the Culture is destroying to prevent the Idirans from seizing it.

The pirates try to steal some weapons from a gargantuan (water) ship, but even that goes wrong when the ship crashes into a wall of ice.

Horza ends up on an island with an apocalyptic cult whose leader is a cannibal and tries to eat Horza's fingers.

Horza escapes, and finds the remnants of the pirates at a game of "Damage."

You can read a more complete plot synopsis at Wikipedia.