Book: Transition
Sorry Martin, it wasn’t that bad, honest!
Transition by Iain M. Banks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Billed as a “return to form” (although apart from the more recent The Steep Approach to Garbadale I haven’t really had any issues, especially the Iain M Banks sci-fi as opposed to the Iain Banks thrillers (which tend to be weaker). (Ok, goodreads and the US indexing system doesn’t highlight this discrepency so go view it at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Banks).
This is meant to be The Bridge-like and also to straddle his genres.
It starts well but then establishes itself as a fairly standard mega-parallel-verse-with-assassins story using Banks’ multiple-first person characterizations. It soon flattens out and then degenerates into a confused, plot-lost, random sex scene, deus ex.., get-out-of-jail-free story with very little satisfactory conclusion. Even the exit ‘gotcha’ was less telling that the Sympathy for the Devil exit of Fallen (ok, an old average movie reference mixed with a book like this doesn’t really make that much sense, but it’s what leapt to mind).
I also think I spotted a couple of inconsistencies with the whole shifting thing, but would need to re-read it to be sure, and it may be that Banks was just trying to be really clever and I missed it. But its not going to be high on my re-read list, whereas several other Banks are: The Algebraist, Look to Windward and Feersum Endjinn.
Disappointing, but even so it still averages out well above a bad book and is a jolly little read with some interesting insight into the minds of assassins, torturers, drug dealers and random mostly unsavoury characters.
