I'll try to keep this spoiler-free. If you want to talk more in depth
about events in the book, please don't forget the appropriate warnings.

I finally got _Transition_ from the local library and finished it last
night. Overall opinion: quite good! I thought Banks had gone downhill a
bit with _The Algebraist_ and really downhill with _Matter_, but
_Transition_ is excellent. I won't call it a return to form, because
it's really very different from his usual, but it's at least a return to
former heights of quality.

The structure of the book makes the plot difficult to follow, especially
for the first 2/3rds or so. The story is told from the viewpoint of many
different characters, and is very disjointed, both spatially and to a
lesser extent temporally. Each character's viewpoint lasts a couple of
pages, then you jump to another character, quite posibbly in a
completely different place and maybe a different time. It takes a fair
amount of mental work to piece everything together. The action is also
very slow to start, with the first 2/3rds or so feeling like setup, and
the last part finally building up to an actual climax.

Normally this might bother me, but not in this case. At least 90% of the
individual passages were interesting enough on their own that I could
just enjoy them individually and let the connections come. The remaining
few that weren't didn't really matter because they were soon over, and
still contributed to the overall story.

The main character (which is a difficult title to assign here, but he is
ultimately the focus) is an agent for "the Concern", an organization
whose people can "flit" between alternate realities, and sometimes have
other similar powers. Nominally, this power is used to improve lives in
the many worlds: they assassinate dictators and potential dictators,
save the lives of people who will eventually make significant
contributions to society, etc. Of course not is all as it seems at first
glance.

We get to see an interesting collection of other characters, including
one of the agent's teachers, a powerful member of the Concern's ruling
council (who has cats with names like Monsieur Pamplemousse, cracks me
up every time I think about it), a professional torturer, and a British
cocaine dealer who's trying to get into stock trading.

This book is not for the faint of heart. There are some graphic
descriptions of torture and one pretty disturbing rape scene. I didn't
find them to be gratuitous, and indeed they contribute strongly to the
story and the characters, but that doesn't lessen their impact.

All in all, highly recommended, but beware that the plot can be
difficult to keep track of.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon