Transition review
Sep. 14th, 2009 08:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearTransition by Iain Banks moved straight to the top of my reading pile when Dave presented it to me last week.
It took rather a while for me to get into it, since it's one of those with 7 or 8 wildly divergent and incomprehensible storylines that each get a few pages in turn and gradually coalesce into a coherent plot.
Once it finally revealed at least partly what it was about, it was quite intriguing. There were several interesting characters, some good discussion of philosophy, and the narrative, as always, was extremely well written.
Parts of it were pretty icky, but not in a way that bothered me, but the denouement was a bit of a cop-out, and the more I think about the transitioning system itself, the less sense it makes.
So, good for anyone who appreciates skilled writing, doesn't mind waiting a while for things to make sense, and doesn't ask too many questions about how it was all supposed to work. Otherwise, I'd skip it.
It took rather a while for me to get into it, since it's one of those with 7 or 8 wildly divergent and incomprehensible storylines that each get a few pages in turn and gradually coalesce into a coherent plot.
Once it finally revealed at least partly what it was about, it was quite intriguing. There were several interesting characters, some good discussion of philosophy, and the narrative, as always, was extremely well written.
Parts of it were pretty icky, but not in a way that bothered me, but the denouement was a bit of a cop-out, and the more I think about the transitioning system itself, the less sense it makes.
So, good for anyone who appreciates skilled writing, doesn't mind waiting a while for things to make sense, and doesn't ask too many questions about how it was all supposed to work. Otherwise, I'd skip it.
