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Loading... Transition (edition 2010)by Iain Banks
Work detailsTransition by Iain M. Banks
 BMorrisAllen | May 14, 2013 |  Fall-Winter-2010 orbitbooks | May 9, 2013 | It's been two days since I finished this book (as always with Banks an interesting, enjoyable read) and I still can't decide whether it's one I really like or not. As always, the plotting is complex and the environment complex, but the basic driving devices are well-worn--multiple alternate worlds, a shadowy agency working among them. Banks colors his characters, world and plot so well, so subtly, however, that at the end I am unable to decide what to think of this novel. Check in periodically, I may figure myself out. (  ) nmele | Apr 6, 2013 | For a long time I have been addicted to the science fiction books of Iain M. Banks. I knew he wrote 'regular' fiction as Iain Banks, but never tried one of those, until I found out those could be just as weird as his science fiction. So, I put one, Transition, on my wish list, and a couple of weeks ago, I got it as a gift. This book is a few stories in one, each of which follows a different person. Not only that, but the stories jump in time too. This makes that you might not understand how it all fits together until the end. It is the story of our world as one of many alternate worlds, each slightly different from the rest. There are people who can travel (or flit) between worlds, and these people work for The Concern. These people alter history slightly, to make the world they are on a better place. But not everyone believes this is necessarily a good thing. So we come to a situation with an assassin with loyalties that aren't quite clear, a dissident with power, and one of the leader of The Concern with too much power. The result is a pretty suspenseful tale, with a link back to our world to keep the reader interested. Different from Banks's science fiction work, but not so different that I don't like it. Time for more Banks without M.. Four out of five stars. (  ) divinenanny | Oct 3, 2012 | I'm putting in everything on one shelf. I remember finding this one interesting, now that I've reminded myself what it was about, but it didn't stick with me and I have little feeling about it now. So, meh. ( ) firebird8 | Sep 16, 2012 |
 In the end, for better or worse, this is a novel held together by its author’s moral vision. Transition may boast a postmodern plethora of worlds, but it offers a single old-fashioned world-view which all this random rattling about paradoxically reveals... This is a thriller with a conscience, decent and timely, even if, amid all the blood and thunder, it sounds what can seem an incongruously still small voice. Despite being published without the M in the author’s name - except in the US - this Iain Banks novel features parallel worlds, and flitting between them, and has as a plot point the existence or not of alien intelligences somewhere out there. As such it can scarcely be described as mainstream. But then early Iain “no M” Banks offerings (Walking On Glass, The Bridge, Canal Dreams) were suffused with SFness and/or sensibility (The Wasp Factory.) Transition does, though, signal its literariness from the outset – its strapline is “based on a false story” and the first words of its prologue are, “Apparently I am what is known as an unreliable narrator.” There is, too, a high degree of characterisation throughout even though, with the aid of a drug known as septus, most of its main characters can flit from one body to another. In typical Banksian fashion there is a shadowy organisation - here known as l’Expédience, or the Concern (which last is a pun) based on a world unusually known as Calbefraques rather than Earth - in charge of the use and distribution of septus and of recruitment to and training for the transition process. I did notice that while at one point it is said that there has to be a recipient body for transitioning to take place - the one left behind has only rudimentary function as a husk - later transitions to uninhabited worlds do take place without added explanation. The narrative is divided between various viewpoint personalities, Patient 8262, who is in hiding in a hospital in a country where the local language is not his own, The Transitionary, who may be an earlier incarnation of Patient 8262, Adrian, a former drug dealer turned hedge fund manager, Madame d’Ortolan, foremost member of the Concern’s ruling council, The Philosopher, a legal torturer, and occasional others. The Transitionary’s is a first person present tense narrative, others are past tense, sometimes first, sometimes third person. The most intriguing character is the rather prosaically named Mrs Mulverhill – who is not married, merely likes the name. In the sort of inversion beloved of SF authors one of the parallel worlds has a set of Christian fanatics pitted against the state and indulging in suicide bombings and the like. The scenario gives Banks the opportunity to riff on how proportionate a response society ought to have to terrorism and on the (in)efficacy of torture. One of his characters also skewers “the invisible hand.” Devotees of Iain M Banks will probably find this a treat. Followers of his M-less namesake ought also to find enough in it to satisfy them.
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0316071986, Hardcover)There is a world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse. Such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organization with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers?Among those operatives are Temudjin Oh, of mysterious Mongolian origins, an un-killable assassin who journeys between the peaks of Nepal, a version of Victorian London and the dark palaces of Venice under snow; Adrian Cubbish, a restlessly greedy City trader; and a nameless, faceless state-sponsored torturer known only as the Philosopher, who moves between time zones with sinister ease. Then there are those who question the Concern: the bandit queen Mrs. Mulverhill, roaming the worlds recruiting rebels to her side; and Patient 8262, under sedation and feigning madness in a forgotten hospital ward, in hiding from a dirty past. There is a world that needs help; but whether it needs the Concern is a different matter. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 04 Jan 2013 07:15:13 -0500) Sharing nothing in common except links to an organization committed to protecting the world from itself, an assembly of dubious characters including a torturer, a reluctant assassin, and an amnesiac patient confront challenges beyond their imagining. (summary from another edition) |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
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One of the benefits of reading (or, I can say, writing) dark fiction is that you can wake up from it with relief. Unfortunately, from the dark world of Transition, where torture and other terrible things happen, I woke to a real world where they also happen. It's a bit grim, and while the politics shouldn't put you off, the torture might - especially when you reflect that it's not just fiction - all these things are really happening. And that's from a guy who writes some dark stuff, and just finished writing a story about torture himself.
The story deals with a large cast of characters and multiple, often limited, or as the story itself points out, unreliable narrators. It takes quite some time to get a handle on what's going on, though I can reveal without spoilers that the core concept is that some people can move from their own minds into the minds of other people in alternate realities. There's a Circle organizing it all, and of course there are bad apples and power struggles (so there is some narrative politics as well).
As always with Banks, the writing is smooth. This time, however, the pieces just didn't add up to a compelling story for me. There are a number of thin or not terribly credible pieces, and a fairly substantial number of loose ends left hanging. The ending was pretty unsatisfactory.
I appreciate that Banks steered away from the Culture, which is wearing a bit thin, but this was not his best effort. True Banks fans probably already have this. If you're new to Banks or not a devotee, I suggest looking elswhere. (