Transition

By: Iain M. Banks

Narrated by: Peter Kenny

Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2009 Iain M. Banks (P)2009 Hachette

Read anything else by Iain M. Banks

Banks defines the "New Space Opera". Go get some "Culture" (that's what his longest series is called) or even better; The Algebraist. This trash-novel ended faster than i expected, and i was relieved.

just too much

it's all pretend and made up so Iain has no excuse for putting some of that excessive stuff in there. it's not as bad as King's coke fueled train in IT, but its still pretty bad.

A waste on money

Not only was the book boring, its fixation on toture was very off-putting. I give two stars because, like book 1 of the Splatterjay series, there is a story somewhere in there amongst the shock and gore.

What was the point?

I listened to the entire book and though it was interesting there doesn’t seem to be any point to the story. 90% of the words describe innocuous things like descriptions of lamps and bed spreads and floor coverings. Useless details. But virtually no effort was spent developing a plot or story line that I can tell. Just random characters in random unrelated story lines describing everything around them in excruciating detail. I kept waiting for some climax, a point where it all comes together in some meaningful way. But the story just peters out the way it began in some meaningless internal dialogue. I have no idea what the point of the story was. Some people with special powers did some things for reasons that were never made clear and accomplished nothing. The End.