Sara's reading log

I am a book hoarder and reader. My main genre is SF, but I also love magic realism, fantasy and general fiction. Favorite authors are Iain M. Banks, Ursula K. LeGuin, Haruki Murakami, José Saramago, Isaac Asimov, Ben Aaronovitch and more. My rating system is based on five stars. I rate books based on my expectations and what a books aims to be. This means that the brilliant 'Fahrenheit 451' gets five stars because I thought it would be good, people said it was good, and it was good, but 'A Closed and Common Orbit' also gets five stars because in its series, in its style, I really enjoyed it and was not disappointed.

Transition by Iain Banks

  • Started on: 2012-09-05
  • Finished on: 2012-09-24
  • Read in: English
  • Rating: ****-
  • Genre(s): Science Fiction

For a long time I have been addicted to the science fiction books of Iain M. Banks. I knew he wrote ‘regular’ fiction as Iain Banks, but never tried one of those, until I found out those could be just as weird as his science fiction. So, I put one, Transition, on my wish list, and a couple of weeks ago, I got it as a gift.
This book is a few stories in one, each of which follows a different person. Not only that, but the stories jump in time too. This makes that you might not understand how it all fits together until the end. It is the story of our world as one of many alternate worlds, each slightly different from the rest. There are people who can travel (or flit) between worlds, and these people work for The Concern. These people alter history slightly, to make the world they are on a better place. But not everyone believes this is necessarily a good thing. So we come to a situation with an assassin with loyalties that aren’t quite clear, a dissident with power, and one of the leader of The Concern with too much power. The result is a pretty suspenseful tale, with a link back to our world to keep the reader interested. Different from Banks’s science fiction work, but not so different that I don’t like it. Time for more Banks without M.. Four out of five stars.

  • Started on: 2012-09-05
  • Finished on: 2012-09-24
  • Read in: English
  • Rating: ****-
  • Genre(s): Science Fiction

For a long time I have been addicted to the science fiction books of Iain M. Banks. I knew he wrote ‘regular’ fiction as Iain Banks, but never tried one of those, until I found out those could be just as weird as his science fiction. So, I put one, Transition, on my wish list, and a couple of weeks ago, I got it as a gift.
This book is a few stories in one, each of which follows a different person. Not only that, but the stories jump in time too. This makes that you might not understand how it all fits together until the end. It is the story of our world as one of many alternate worlds, each slightly different from the rest. There are people who can travel (or flit) between worlds, and these people work for The Concern. These people alter history slightly, to make the world they are on a better place. But not everyone believes this is necessarily a good thing. So we come to a situation with an assassin with loyalties that aren’t quite clear, a dissident with power, and one of the leader of The Concern with too much power. The result is a pretty suspenseful tale, with a link back to our world to keep the reader interested. Different from Banks’s science fiction work, but not so different that I don’t like it. Time for more Banks without M.. Four out of five stars.