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Transition is a really, really dreadful book, Banks at his worst: rushed, incoherent and lazy. The book reads like a first draft (and knowing how Iain Banks works, probably is), the plot is potentially a great idea but clearly not properly developed or thought through and the central character is a selfish, murdering prick, who Banks clearly expects us to regard as a basicly decent person: hey, he turns traitor against the organisation that he's previously cheerfully commited murder for so he must be a Goody, right? I actually threw Transition away without finishing it. Banks has written some brilliant stuff in the past but my God, he needs an editor who'll stand up to him and insist that he produces books that aren't an insult to his readership. With Transition, Banks has clearly thought: "Well, I could spend 6 months knocking the book into a proper shape but sod it, people buy whatever I publish, so why bother?"
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Apr 27, 2010 22:03
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I've always rather disliked the Culture. I know that it's Bank's idea of heaven but I find it hard to view it as anything but a bunch of self-indulgent, overgrown children and their sanctimonious robot babysitters. I read Look to Windward and spent the whole time rooting for the Chelonians to succeed in blowing the Orbital up: I thought that the Culture totally deserved it. Who the hell do they think they are? "Yeah, we came along interfering in your society and ended up causing a catastrophe but we didn't mean to do it and, hey, you sometimes get these statistical blips. Sorry!"
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Aug 6, 2010 20:42
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Well, it's inevitable that novels about the Culture will concentrate on eccentrics, outcasts and disasters. After all, in Utopia nothing much ever happens. Nothing that you could write a gripping adventure story about, anyway.
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Aug 8, 2010 18:19
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Was anyone else disapointed with Transition? It started off a bit like Jerry-Cornelius-era Michael Moorcock fanfiction (which I was fine with), then just got a bit lazy and preachy. It's not just you: Transition was dreadful. A potentially good idea that Banks knocked together into an incoherent, sloppily written novel. It reads as if he just wrote stuff down as fast as he possibly could, then sent it straight off to be published the moment he reached the requisite number of pages. Every time Banks brings out one of these lazy, unprofessional insults to his readers, I always vow never to buy one of his books again. Trouble is, he then goes and writes something decent, like The Algebraist, or Matter and I'm forced to forgive him, through gritted teeth. I'm hoping Surface Detail will be one of his good ones: he always seems to put more effort into his books with these sort of themes.
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Oct 2, 2010 19:31
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Quantum Cat posted:I loved that ending Having Zakalwe fighting in the war of heaven and hell trying to find redemption or punish himself or both was brilliant. Yeah it's kinda contrived but it's the kind of contrived that can and I think in this case does work. I mean poo poo having the chairmaker fighting for the existence of hell/s because he truly thinks he deserves to be in hell...thats hosed. I love it. Ha, so that's who he was! The name was sort of familiar but I couldn't quite place him. Didn't think much of that: Bank's sci-fi novels are so full of weird names that I do sometimes forget who's who. Then I searched all the way back through the book and still couldn't find him mentioned again. Mystery solved! One thing that I think causes Banks some difficulty with the Culture novels is that the galaxy he portrays is normally just so drat safe. Sure, there's massively advanced alien species all over the place but they're generally reasonable types who all get along together and do their best to help out less developed civilizations. It's almost impossible for anything really bad to happen and as soon as it does, the Galactic emergency services are on the scene, putting sticking plasters on grazed knees etc. It's significant then that in his latest book, all the most gruesome stuff takes place in virtual environments: sure, it's bloody torture and death but it's not even taking place in the 'Real', as normal life is known in the book; the Culture and their equiv-level buddies would never allow it. There're no sharp edges in Bank's fictional galaxy, which seems to be forcing him to make the violence in his books ever more abstract. Great book by the way, a real return to form for Banks. Perhaps he should just stick to writing Culture novels and knock everything else on the head?
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Oct 21, 2010 19:11
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The Dark One posted:Any time I look at my copy, I feel bad, because it's got that Yeah, it was so chatty and helpful to him as well 
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Feb 11, 2011 22:22
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shuttle the Culture sent to ferry off those cultists right on the cover. Poor, stupid shuttle.