Transition
Transition is my first Iain Banks novel and he, and the book, comes highly recommended by friends. Unfortunately I have to disagree with the praise. I like the writing style and lots of the ideas but the book failed to move me.
The book tells the story from the eyes of several different persons and weaves a story back and forth between different actors, times and places - indeed dimensions. Because of this its harder to read that most books that present with a clearer narrative and only a few viewpoints, the story is weaved together in the end but fails to impress. Somehow roughly the same story in fewer viewpoints could have been quite enjoyable but because of the several stories told from the eye of several main characters you never really feel connected to a central protagonist and left not really caring what happens. The battle to stop the evil machinations fails to feel important and I ended up reading through the whole book, waiting for it to start. What leaves me perplexed is that the book is just the type of book that I could've and should've liked - the theme and lots of the ideas in it are just the kind of things I find enjoyable and there's nothing wrong the writing either. But somehow because of the discontinuity of the story and lack of reason to find the actions of the protagonists important, or like-able, it just fell flat to me. I will, however, give the author another chance since several of my friends like him. In my pile of recently purchased books is Iain M Banks "The Player of Games" which sounds promising, hoping to like that one more and perhaps yet become a fan of mr. Banks.
