Transition

[sawyl]

Despite Patrick Ness' rather negative review in the Guardian, I decided take the plunge and read Iain Banks' latest novel, Transition. Despite rather enjoying the book over all, I don't think it quite worked a whole.

The premise of the novel is universe where multiple versions of reality exist alongside one another in a way that makes it possible for certain people to transition from world to world with the aid of a drug called septus. The minority of people who are able to flit between worlds inevitably end up working for the Concern, a shadowy organisation with obscure and possibly sinister political goals.

The plot unfolds gradually and out of sequence through a series of different viewpoints spread across a number of different worlds. We learn about a patient in a long-term medical facility and about the career of a truly obnoxious hedge fund manager. We follow the progress of an assassin called Temudjin Oh, his rebellious mentor Mrs Mulverhill, and the de facto head of Concern, Madame d'Ortolan, as the two women engage in a protracted struggle for the future of the organisation.

Although it's pretty clear what the book is trying to do — to criticise selfish, short-term, ends justify the means neo-conservatism — it fails in its task because the political and philosophical bits are too shallow, too superficial to gain any real traction. They are too easily diluted by the overdone sex scenes — yes, we get that Temudjin and Mulverhill like doing the nasty, but do all their discussions about the future of the Concern have to take place in bed? — and by feeling that none of the characters have been particularly marked by their horrible experiences — Use of Weapons for details.

But for all its flaws, it was an fun read. There were some wonderful sounding, if deeply implausible alternate Earths and, on the part of the Concern, some inventive forms of hedonism, even if they were rather overplayed. The villainess was wonderfully, absurdly camp; so much so that she coordinated her cats to her outfits — not something your ordinary Bond villain would think to do. While Mme Ortolan ultimate weapon, the delightfully unbalanced Lady Bisquitine, with her wonderful semi-nonsense was great fun, a real throwback to Bascule in Feersom Endjinn (damn it, I'm dyslexic and I still can't get the title of that book right without going off and looking it up).

And even Unpleasant Adrian the Hedgie had his moments; particularly his last, which made me laugh with delight. (I also disagree with Patrick Ness that Ade's prolix descriptions of drugs are a waste of time, because I think they're there to establish his fundamental unreliablity as a judge of himself. Adrian goes to great lengths to describe how much he likes cocaine but finishes his great paean by claiming that he seldom takes the stuff himself. Which would be find but, in almost every one of his subsequent appearances, he is either coked up or in the process of becoming so.)

Best of all though, the book doesn't reveal all its secrets. Although we learn something about the process of transitioning and that it involves the mind rather than the body, we never quite get a entirely satisfactory — to me, at least — explanation of what happens to the bodies left behind or to the minds that are displaced by the visiting transitioners. Or perhaps we do. Perhaps the lack of a clear system of mechanics is intentional; a test to see if the reader is capable of filling in the blanks by themselves.