---
product_id: 16710679
title: "Transition Paperback – September 15, 2010"
brand: "iain m. banks"
price: "S$46"
currency: SGD
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 7
url: https://www.desertcart.sg/products/16710679-transition-paperback-september-15-2010
store_origin: SG
region: Singapore
---

# Transition Paperback – September 15, 2010

**Brand:** iain m. banks
**Price:** S$46
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

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- **What is this?** Transition Paperback – September 15, 2010 by iain m. banks
- **How much does it cost?** S$46 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.sg](https://www.desertcart.sg/products/16710679-transition-paperback-september-15-2010)

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## Description

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    A good read, with some issues
  

*by T***E on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 19, 2012*

I enjoy Iain M. Banks' writing very much, but I have issues with this book - there is what appears to be a serious internal inconsistency, plus a surprising moral hole in the story.The basic premise is that "transitionaries" working for "the Concern" flit their minds from their home world into the bodies of persons in various other Earths of the multiverse. The transitionary takes over the body (shutting down the mind, apparently), and uses it to accomplish whatever task the Concern has set, often including murder.  Task done, the transitioner flits back home, leaving the poor sap whose body was used to deal with the consequences.The transitionaries send only their minds (along with their flit-inducing drug, or, with great talent and effort, a somewhat larger object such as a gun).  They cannot send their own bodies; they must find a host-body in the target world.  And yet, partway through the book, we find Our Hero (Temudjin Oh) and the cat-eyed Mrs. Mulverhill hot-tubbing on a world on which all life has recently been exterminated.  Hello?  Whose bodies did they find on a sterile world?  Now, Mrs. Mulverhill has many interesting talents, and Oh develops some special tricks of his own, but if their talents included bringing their own original bodies from world to world, I missed it.  And in any case, this sterile world is described as "a place where privileged officers of the Concern could holiday," so it's not just Oh and Mrs M. who go there.  This is so peculiar and inconsistent that I wonder if Banks is poking us in the eye, although if so I don't get the point.  Perhaps we are supposed to remember that Oh (as Patient 8262) describes himself as an unreliable narrator at the beginning of the book.  If he's unreliable enough to matter-of-factly describe a lengthy episode that is entirely impossible, it calls into question everything he says in the entire book. But if we're simply supposed to wonder if anything is true, I still don't get the point.I was also bothered by the book's failure to deal at all with the plight of the hosts whose bodies the transitionaries use.  Oh brings up the issue, and then drops it.  This is peculiar in a book that includes an extensive and impassioned attack on the morality of those who use and justify torture.  Surely using somebody's body to commit a murder, and then leaving that somebody bloody-handed for the local police to find is savagely immoral, if not quite the same as torture -- and such misuse of others happens every single time a transitionary travels.  Yet Oh, and by extension the author, seem no more than mildly curious about the damage and fear the hosts must certainly suffer.  (I know; it's a story about the transitionaries, not about the hosts -- but a story that explicitly takes strong moral positions, yet ignores this apparently central moral issue.)To close on a more positive note, I need to mention a subplot - the question why, given an infinite series of Earths, no aliens seem ever to have shown up from anywhere.  Perhaps, it is suggested, they might be here as (hidden) tourists watching something unique to Earth; i.e., a total eclipse of the sun, with the sun's corona showing around the edge of the moon.  I loved the hints that Mrs. Mulverhill may be an alien, or part alien.  I picture her looking for her alien father or grandfather during a total eclipse in Tibet, shortly after she kills Madame D'Ortolan on the train to Lhasa.Read it, but not if you're a stickler for consistency.

### ⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Good but not his best - incompletely developed ideas
  

*by M***H on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 31, 2011*

It was well written, with interesting characters, obfuscated narration, clever tricks, flash forwards / backwards / sideways and the sort narrative twisting that reminds me of Use of Weapons. In short, it was a very Iain M Banks novel. He's a fan of complex ideas and complex narratives. To claim that his leftist politics are too intrusive on the story, well, I guess you haven't read many of his other books - he's rarely shied away from making a pointed remark in that direction.My only problem, or complaint, is that it just isn't that well thought out. It's made clear early on (and in several other reviews) that this is fundamentally a Many Worlds idea. Unlike, say, the 1950s Sci Fi efforts of multiple dimensions and alternate earths, this narrative uses an  interpretation of modern physics writ large by Brian Greene. For a particle in some quantum state, it may end up in state A or state B - completely at random. Many Worlds is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that says that both of these outcomes are valid and, in fact, occur - there are infinities of universes constantly splitting and spiraling off from each other in countless number, from every little event, even, say, the decay of a radioactive element deep within the crust of the Earth (or some other planet, even). Most people tend to misunderstand this idea and instead ascribe the splitting of universes to individual, conscious choices they make - not really thinking about all the infinities that precede that choice (or if indeed there is such a thing as choice!) or, even taking the idea at its face, thinking about all the choices being made all the time by all the people, animals, insects ... anyway, its an enormous landscape of infinities.Within this interpretation Banks crafts a framework of travel across these infinities, and a group that attempts to improve the state of the world(s). To his credit he addresses briefly the futility of it all - why try to improve the outcome of this one version of reality when there are always an infinite number where they are not improved? What about the infinities of worlds where your efforts have made it worse? The argument presented in the book is basically "even though hopeless, we have to try" - almost a Spiderman like appeal.But the main sticking point for me is within this framework he asserts a sort of unique point of view which we might call the spirit or the consciousness of the transistioner. It is this "mind" or "soul" which moves, and it goes to inhabit some other body (what happens to the displaced?) for a time but it might come back "home" at some point, or even more confusingly, to the "unique" home reality of the Transitioning Concern. As the book actually points out, once you take any kind of belief in the many worlds, and some kind of transfer between them, any idea like solipsism is immediately suspect - but this includes the entire premise of the book, this unique points of view which are the characters.I have a lot of respect of Iain Banks and his skills, so I believe that this must have occurred to him - perhaps this is why the first line of the book is basically "I'm an unreliable narrator". But I think he was too in love with some of the ideas to come up with a solution. For me, it put a sizable damper on my ability to lose myself in the story - I kept scratching my head and saying "but what?" and hoping that in the end it would be addressed or resolved somehow.On the whole, still enjoyable, but I would say : if you like the idea of contemporary settings and large global conspiracy, read The Business. If you like really twisting narratives and dark twists, read Use of Weapons. Both are better than this effort.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Mind-blowing imagination!
  

*by A***R on Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 30, 2018*

Iain Banks blew my mind - again! I usually read and enjoy his sci-fi (published as Iain M. Banks), but I've found his "mainstream" books difficult to follow. This is probably because I can't relate to his Scottish/European reference points. I had no such problem this time! I admire his ability to conjure up imaginary, non-existent locations and situations into my mind, twisting them into believable configurations and weaving them all into a gripping narrative that leaves me intellectually satisfied. This book should have been published under the Iain M Banks sci-fi sobriquet.

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