Book review: Transition by Iain Banks

TL;DR: didn't really like it but I enjoyed reading it.

You can start off with the Grauniad review, which rather expresses what I think. Goodreads has something more positive to say but reassures me that I didn't really miss anything: the thing is all surface and there's nothing subtle hiding underneath; this is Banks after all.

Complaints: the generic Scottish anti-capitalist bits are tedious. The concept is largely nicked from Asimov's The end of eternity, with (as Goodreads reminded me) a bit of A plague of pythons thrown in. I'd strongly recommend either of those above this. Towards the end, the Hero-so-to-speak randomly acquires special powers as may become convenient. Shortly after the Baddies get a Special Agent Bisquitine who suddenly has even bigger arbitrary powers. The multiple-world-spanning Concern seems somehow a very small thing and curiously under-drawn. The philosophy is dull; I skipped most of it. And so on and so forth. It all feels rather crudely drawn and crudely done and perhaps tossed off in a hurry.

The good bits are fairly thin. It's a reasonable page-turner. Actually, that's about it.

Addition: the book is "noisy"; and one of the irritating features is that much of the noise is just noise; there's no hidden subtlety - unless oh course it was too subtle to notice. Some of this is fine: Ade goes grouse shooting, that is semi-random-noise, but actually it's part of the development of his story, and does move the book. But Patient-and-the-sex-dolls is just random mystification for no reason and just annoys.

For another disappointment (the lack of reason-ability) see Rendezvous with Rama. Another thought: the book gives no thought to what happens to the people transitioned into; for a book with nominal pretensions to philosophy, this is a lack. Are the consciousnesses merely suppressed for a while? Are they displaced "elsewhere"? Are the "husks" what happens to people transitioned into too long? Do any of the transitioners ever feel any guilt? All these questions are resolutely ignored.