Transition
by Iain M. Banks
List Price:
Our Price: $7.96
You Save: $18.03 (69%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.66 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Iain M. BanksEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-09-23
ISBN: 0316071986
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Orbit
Book Reviews of Transition
Book Review: Unreliable Narrator Smothered by Assassin
Summary: 5 Stars
Ordinarily this would be a spoiler, but it is offered in the Prologue by one of the book's narrators as an ending for readers too impatient to hear the whole story. Readers are left holding this ending while they absorb enough of the story to give it meaning. And they may make a wrong assumption or two. This is a well-written book; not easy to figure out but worth the effort.
The overall plot is straightforward. A shadowy organization called The Concern monitors activities in a large number of parallel Earths. Their operatives transition between worlds using a drug supplied by The Concern. After each transition, operatives remain "themselves," but take on the physical appearance--and some of the mental characteristics--of the host person they have taken control of. The Concern influences events in these parallel worlds through various means, including selective assassination of key players--or potential players--in world events. All of this is supposedly for the greater good. Some of the book's characters, such as the competent assassin Temudjin Oh, the renegade Mrs. Mulverhill, and the unnamed hospitalized Patient 8262, have their doubts. Each recoils from The Concern in a different way. As the story unfolds, we learn more about who each of them are and what they have learned about The Concern.
Fans of "Iain M. Banks" hard science fiction, such as Use of Weapons and The Algebraist, will not encounter the same high-tech, high-Culture environment in Transitions. It is more similar to his previous "Iain Banks" fiction. The Concern is another version of Banks' many-tentacled corporation in The Business and the multinational dysfunctional family business in The Steep Approach to Garbadale. Fans of Kage Baker's "Company" series (which begins with In the Garden of Iden), may enjoy the similar, but more complex machinations of The Concern.
New Banks readers may benefit from some comparisons. The book has something of a Tom Clancy style, perspective-shifting between characters whose stories eventually come together. Banks' characters are different from Clancy's, though. They are darker, of course, and they act based on incomplete understandings of their world. Anne Rice fans (The Vampire Lestat) will enjoy Banks' skillful deployment of unreliable narrators and the patterns revealed by their collective errors in perspective. Banks' style contrasts interestingly with Stephen King's. Although both authors take us into the dark, the reader finishes a King book with much of the hidden territory mapped and understood, if at some human cost. Banks leads his readers into the mists, allows them only glimpses, partial revelations, and the hints of patterns. We draw many conclusions for ourselves and find little certainty. Such is his intent.
This book is highly recommended as a rewarding and thought-provoking read. The writing is nuanced, finely textured, and superb.
Summary of Transition
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.
Scottish Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Scottish Books
Dreaming the Bullby Manda Scott
Dell; Published: 2008-11-25; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.43
Price in other shops:
The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs: A Novelby Irvine Welsh
W. W. Norton; Published: 2006-08-07; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $1.55
Price in other shops:
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (Oxford World's Classics)by James Hogg
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2009-08-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.66
Price in other shops:
The Man of Feeling (Oxford World's Classics)by Henry Mackenzie
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2009-08-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.49
Price in other shops:
The Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant: The Complete Textby Margaret Oliphant
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1990-12-06; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops:
Writing and Orality: Nationality, Culture and Nineteenth-Century Scottish Fictionby Penny Fielding
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1996-08-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $164.00
Price in other shops:
Greenmantle (Oxford World's Classics)by John Buchan
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1999-12-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $25.01
Hamish Brown's Scotland: A Chapbook of Explorationsby Hamish Brown
Aberdeen Univ Pr; Published: 1988-08; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $22.50
Transitionby Iain M. Banks
Orbit; Published: 2009-09-23; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.96
Price in other shops:
Treasure Island (World's Classics)by Robert Louis Stevenson
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1985-06-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.79
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Terminal Worldby Alastair Reynolds
Ace Hardcover; Published: 2010-06-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.49
Price in other shops:
Look to Windwardby Iain M. Banks
Star Trek; Published: 2001-08-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $59.95
Consider Phlebasby Iain M. Banks
Orbit; Published: 2008-03-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.51
Price in other shops:
Rule 34by Charles Stross
Ace Hardcover; Published: 2011-07-05; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.97
Price in other shops:
Zero Historyby William Gibson
Putnam Adult; Published: 2010-09-07; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.98
Price in other shops:
The State Of The Artby Iain M. Banks
Night Shade Books; Published: 2007-04-24; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.24
Price in other shops:
The Children of the Sky (Zones of Thought)by Vernor Vinge
Tor Books; Published: 2011-10-11; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.52
Price in other shops:
Against a Dark Backgroundby Iain M. Banks
Orbit; Published: 2009-07-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.00
Price in other shops:
Surface Detail (Culture)by Iain M. Banks
Orbit; Published: 2010-10-28; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.07
Price in other shops:
The Player of Games (Culture)by Iain M. Banks
Orbit; Published: 2008-03-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.03
Price in other shops: