The first critics to review Scottish novelist Iain Banks’ new novel Transition can’t agree on whether the book is a masterpiece or a hunk of junk.
Unusually, Banks has apparently tried to bridge his mainstream novels with his science fiction prose (published separately under Iain M. Banks) in the book, which was released early this month.
But, writes James Walton in UK newspaper The Telegraph, the attempt failed:
… the storytelling isn’t very accomplished. Several plot strands are set up only to remain undeveloped — or abandoned … The prologue may lead us to expect — rather excitedly in my case — a dark conspiracy thriller. What we get instead feels more like a bundle of half-formed bits and pieces that were knocking about in Banks’s notebooks.
However, writing in the Independent on Sunday, reviewer Doug Johnstone heaps praise on Transition, noting he wished more contemporary fiction was like the novel:
As always with Banks, the imaginative detail is frequently stunning. By creating a universe of infinite different but related worlds, the writer has given his mind free rein to create and describe all sorts of weird and wonderful alternatives to our society … Transition is a book that makes you think, one that makes you look at the world around you in a different light, and it’s also a properly thrilling read.
Other short reviews of the book are available online, but they don’t go beyond a few paragraphs as do Johnstone and Walton.
Several reviewers on Amazon also posted somewhat negative reviews of the book. Writes one:
“As Banks moves from world to world his descriptions of lavish parties and claustrophobic hospitals are detailed and evocative. The ending is tense and exciting. Yet in the development of the story, the rapid changes of perspective often become frustrating and confusing dissipating the momentum of the plot. This is an ambitious and challenging novel but one which I did not enjoy as much as others by the writer.
Another added that too many of the plot lines in the book didn’t seem to go anywhere, with the book being cramped because of too many ideas.
The synopsis for the book 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 organisation with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers? On the Concern’s books are Temudjin Oh, an un-killable assassin who journeys between the peaks of Nepal, a version of Victorian London and the dark palaces of Venice; and a nameless, faceless torturer known only as the Philosopher.
And then there’s the renegade Mrs Mulverhill, who recruits rebels to her side; and Patient 8262, hiding out from a dirty past in a forgotten hospital ward. As these vivid, strange and sensuous worlds circle and collide, the implications of turning traitor to the Concern become horribly apparent, and an unstable universe is set on a dizzying course.
I have to agree with the negative reviewers. I’ve read all of Banks’ stuff, and this is one of his worst. Not quite as bad as The Business, but definitely bottom tier. The world-building is lazy, the characters are flat, and the plot is alternatively slow and utterly pointless. Quite a disappointment.
Really? I just posted my review, I quite liked it:
http://www.keepingthedoor.com/2009/10/26/iain-banks-transition-review/
Have to say I’m flabbergasted that this novel has mixed reviews. I thought it was fantastic!
I have read all of banks’ previous works and would definitely rate this up there with the best.
He seems to have great fun obfuscating who is who in the narrative, purposefully leaving until the final act to reveal who’s who.
The book uses an excellent premise to explore some pretty profound issues and does so using interesting three dimensional characters. Its also a ripping yarn to boot!
As for unexplored story arcs or loose ends, I suspect that this is just an introduction to world (or worlds) that Banks fully intends to revisit.
This is M.banks transition into the mainstream and I for one loved it. Please sir can i have some more?
I agree with your sentiments Karl. However I kind of feel that Transition is not for everyone. As I wrote in the review:
“Many will be turned off by Banks’ disaffected style and his demand that readers dig a little deeper and work for their literary reward.”
My feeling is some reviewers didn’t bother digging ;)
I have to agree with Karl…Not only is this a dynamite book with wonderful depth and subtlety, it rewards the careful reader with its heart…And it sets up a potential series that could rival the milieu of The Culture.
Re Alexander’s take, I’m reminded of the great Gene Siskel’s comment about a critic calling a fine film ‘slow’: ‘If you think this movie was slow, then you’re slow.’
Loved 90% of banks work, got this one (Transition) with high expectations only to have them deftly and steadily crushed. A steaming turd of a book by an author with so much more to offer. Shame on you Banks I want my money and my time back!
Transitions felt oddly familiar… until I realised that I had been expecting Moorcocks’ Jerry Cornelius and Mrs Una Persson to pop into this corner of the Multiverse. Maybe I ought to have just have stuck to “The English Assassin” and watched them start needling people or shaking them down in counterpoint to Soviet Tanks rolling into yet another Prague in yet another 1968.
Oh, and even the Villainess felt like Mrs Brunner. Pity there was no Bishop Beesley.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Cornelius
For what it’s worth.
Banks has created another fascinating fictional world in which to ply his art. I’m hoping we learn as much about The Concern as we have The Culture in his sci-fi works. I’d say this is a foundation novel and necessarily leaves some arcs open, the reader left wanting.
Can somebody explain to me why Temudjin Oh murders Adrian, the guy who has just saved his life, on the last page? Seems a tad excessive. Or am I missing something?
I think you did miss something. Oh didn’t murder Adrian, he flitted into the mind of his would-be assassin as he tried to make his escape from the hospital and caused him to crash. Adrian was killed by his own over-attachment to his material posessions – possibly a comment from the author on the (at least partial) failure of a “greed world”.
Thanks, Neil – yup – I suppose that makes sense. Though the last time I met Patient 8262 he seemed pretty confused, and I’d have thought not quite up for transitional derring do. But you’ll tell me that Oh was just lying low under the surface. Heigh ho – the reader you’ve just enlightened is a bear of very limited brain.
And that being the case, one of the many things I don’t get about this transitional multi-world caper: in all these universes there must be a very large number of Ohs, Ortolans, Mulverhills, Biscuittins – and sometimes they’ll have taken one political or personal choice about who’s side they’re on, and sometimes another. What happens when they meet, and they belong to the wrong party? Must happen quite a lot with all this identity-swapping – could be quite embarrassing. Or do a subset of the infinite Ohs ever arrange to meet in a largish cafe in some version of Venice, and swap perspectives?
Mind you, I still think it’s a trifle casual to polish off poor Adrian on the last page. A bit of an afterthought. And if we’re talking moral comments on the part of the suthor, Adrian’s pushy entrepreneurial dosh-gobbling seems to me pretty innocent compared with sexy Oh’s murders-on-order – he keeps telling us he has no idea why the victims have to be spiflicated – just does it because he’s been told to. Now where have I heard that excuse before?
The torturer ends up getting tortured – why shouldn’t the murderer end up getting murdered, if punishment for moral failure is the name of the game?
An I for an I, as Transitionaries put it.
Yeah, the whole “almost infinite” multiverse thing never really works does it. Good brain training trying to think it through though. Banks always seems to have some kind of moral perspective in his work but its common for him to not to follow through with the neat tying of ends with all the characters. I agreed Adrian’s end was a bit glib and contrived as was Philosopher’s but Oh’s lack of come-uppance from the point of view of tidiness may point to some kind of gradual remorse for earlier actions he committed under the auspices of the state, as he sees the bigger pictur.
e. Perhaps they are just all part of one composite Freudian character of the novel – Buscuittine is the “id” (childlike, unpredicatble but with huge influence) Mulverhill the “superego” (in control, wise) and Oh, Philosopher and Adrian are the “ego” (their actions following their own world views) until they meet with the superego who either kills them or points them in the right direction. This seems to be a thread that runs though much of Banks’ work?? On the whole the book doesn’t necessarily work scientificallly but why should it as its hugely enjoyable and each episode extremely well written.