Transition by Iain Banks

There's a tradition with Iain Banks that his sci fi novels are credited using his middle initial as part of his name, whereas his more grounded and literary works are published as by plain old Iain Banks. This book from 2009 is something of a bait and switch then, even though there's a enigmatic line about 'being based on a false story' and the opening paragraph admits to being from an unreliable narrator, being based in the concept of multiple parallel worlds and certain gifted individuals who can transition (or flit) between them by taking control of unwitting hosts for a time.

The rules for the setting are explained in the prologue, much as a stage magician shows that there is nothing up his sleeves as he sets his cards out on the table. We start in our world, sometime between the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989 and the fall of the twin towers in 2001, looking forward to a third metaphorical fall in the financial crash of 2008. Our unreliable narrator tells us how the story will end with his death in a hospital bed being smothered by a black clad assailant (or will it?).

We are introduced to other characters and settings - a train on a plateau so high the passengers must wear oxygen masks, an arch capitalist city trader wide boy, someone pitching an idea of finding aliens by looking for strangers at total eclipses (a vanishingly rare phenomenon in our galaxy), a baroque magical university, a torturer and someone sat at a pavement cafe in Paris.

The narrative then splits to follow different (apparently unrelated) characters - a familiar Banksian trick -

• Patient 8262 - a man confined to a hospital bed in a strange asylum where he is hiding from something
• The Transitionary - an individual with the ability to flit between the worlds using a unique drug, taking control of another body for a while to alter the course of history in those worlds in various ways, ranging from subtle changes to brutal (and imaginative) assassinations
• Adrian - an Alan Sugar style East End barrow boy, now on his way up as a rapacious city trader, dealing a bit of coke on the side and very much enjoying the fruits of his labours
• Madame d'Ortolan - the head of a mysterious organisation known as The Concern directing matters across the multiverse, but seemingly concerned more with the byzantine intrigues between different factions in said organisation, notably her arch rival Mrs Mulverhill
• The Philosopher - an operative who uses precisely calculated methods of torture to extract information from his victims

The parallel narratives then play out in alternating sections in each chapter with the links between them slowly starting to become apparent. The final chapter sees Banks weave them all together in a breathless finale with his traditional flourish and a nod towards the opening teaser to keep an element of ambiguity.

Parts of this book are uncomfortable reading. Banks always had a reputation as an 'Enfant Terrible' of the literary world from his very first novel The Wasp Factory. There are sections that deal with sexual assault, loss of bodily autonomy, terrorism and torture, often in gruesome detail. There are also more than a few scenes of 'sexposition' with various characters narrating the plot whilst shagging.

You really have to cut the author a lot of slack that these elements are going to pay off in the end, and given that this is Iain Banks they mostly do. It does get slightly frustrating when each individual vignette finishes and switches to another character though. It doesn't help that some of the characters range from the slightly irritating to deeply unpleasant, making those sections a bit of a slog, before you get back to bits that you are invested in.

There are some fantastic ideas on offer here though, which would make an intriguing setting for a role playing game. As well as the basic power to transition between worlds other powers are introduced -

• Foreseers can predict future timelines
• Trackers can pursue other transitionaries between the worlds
• Blockers can stop someone else from transitioning
• Exorcisers can cast a transitioner out of their host body
• Inhibitors who can dampen other powers
• Randomisers with wild card superpowers

Ideas such as transitioning into a younger body to gain effective immortality and co-transitioning through physical (or sexual, hem, hem) touch are also introduced.

Probably not among the best Banks novels - those would be The Crow Road and Player of Games for me, but an enjoyable read nonetheless.