I’ll say one thing for it: it was a page turner for the first half because I kept thinking that on the next page it would all make sense. Instead, the plot flaws and inconsistencies just mounted up in cumulative fashion until by the end I didn’t care any more.

In fact, there are more plot flaws than you can shake a stick out. The whole premise of the transitioning concept just doesn’t make sense. The idea seems to be that at every quantum event where multiple possible outcomes could occur, multiple alternative universes are spawned where each possible outcome takes place. So far, so good, but if personalities are moving between these universes then infinitely more universes are constantly coming into existence even as the transitioner is out of his original body. In each of those universes, the transitioner has different experiences so it just makes no sense for the transitioner to return to his original body with a single experience (after all, he will have been killed in some of the alternative universes).

As for Calbefraque being unique, how so? It may have been once but since then surely infinite Calbefraque’s would have developed in their respective alternative universes.

Then there’s the part that really got my goat. Mrs Mulverhill and Mr Oh transition to an Earth where all life has been wiped out. Excuse me?! Into whose body do they transition then?!

Also, there’s the ongoing sub plot about Mrs Mulverhill having cat-slit eyes but having to hide them with a veil. How can this be? It’s clearly stated that transitioner’s take on the exact appearance of the body into which they transition. Either that body has cat-slit eyes in which case it would presumably be normal on that Earth and raise no comment or that body wouldn’t have cat-slit eyes and no veil would be required.

What’s really annoying is that any half-decent editor would have spotted these and got Banks to fix them. In view of this book and some of his other recent offerings, I’m getting the impression that Banks is in the unfortunate position that he is too “important” for any editor to dare to sit him down and tell him to do a major re-write.

In any case, I think I could have overlooked all the above blunders on the grounds that it was not supposed to be an SF book if the plot and characters were compelling. Instead, we have incredibly two dimensional characters (with the notable exception of Mr Kleist – the book’s only saving grace in my view) who are simply “good” or “bad” because they are. Then we get a hold lot of left wing political and economic verbiage that seems a little pointless because if you need to have a fantasy world to make your arguments make sense than that rather undermines the arguments in the first place.

Anyway, I think I’ll leave it there. This book isn’t worth spending any more time on.

And I loved ‘Dead Air’ – can’t believe the negative press it got. Now THAT was rolling dialogue done brilliant.