Rating: 
Summary: I would say pass
Review: Iain Banks is a highly respected writer. And the premise of this book - a musician trapped in the Panama Canal, due to the fact that she is travelling by ship because of a fear of flying. There are enough interesting ancillary characters to go somewhere. So why one star?Where do i start? Partly because of the annoying dream sequences that have absolutely no relevance to the story. Partly due to the fact that none of the characters are really developed. Partly because the cutting between the present and past of the central character is annoying. And partly becuase the story is simply stupid. The only reason that i have given it one star is because it started off with an interesting premise. I seriously recommend that you don't waste your time on this book. Perhaps there are better Bank's books out there to fill your time.
Rating: 
Summary: He's done better, but don't dismiss it
Review: It's a testament to Banks' abilities that this book is even readable considering how awkward it feels. As one can see from other reviews, it's probably his least liked book, and while I didn't hate it as much as the others seem to, I'm not going to go and claim that it's his masterpiece. It has an interesting premise, a near future where involves a rather complicated seeming political situation that somehow involves the Panama canal. Why are we at the canal? Because the main character, a Japanese cello player can't bring herself to fly anywhere so she's taking a ship to Europe. The main character is probably where the trouble starts, he does his best to give her some sort of personality through loads of actually rather striking backstory (his plotting skills may be off in this book but he sure can write and pull out a memorable scene) but the character comes off as rather isolated and distant and it's never really explained why she's that way. Even with the backstory, her motivations are a bit clouded (I can understand her fear of flying but why such an extreme reaction?). Also, he keeps throwing in absolutely bizarre dream sequences that while more like most people's dream sequences (ie they make no sense) they also seem to have no relation to the action at hand which makes them interesting reading but rather irrelevant. I haven't even touched on the plot itself . . . basically during the voyage while they're stuck in the canal, a bunch of terrorists take over the ship . . . and without giving too much away it doesn't go well (he gets bonus points for an inventive use for grenades, talk about style) and our cello player suddenly turns into Bruce Willis. Then the book ends. So all the pieces are there, but they just aren't put together well. So what's good about it? The writing itself is excellent, some of his best descriptions are here and as I mentioned earlier, he has a good eye for setting a striking scene. The book itself isn't that long, which means even if you don't enjoy it, it'll be over soon, so he gets points for not dragging out something that wasn't going too well to begin with. So the book mostly succeeds in little moments, flashbacks and small scenes and the like, but when you put it all together, it doesn't hold all that well. Oh well, he can't hit it out of the park every time. Obviously not the book to go for if you're trying to introduce someone to him, it makes for a quick read on its own and there's enough decent stuff to recommend it to fans, even if they'll have no reason to read it more than once.
Rating:
Summary: He's done better, but don't dismiss it
Review: It's a testament to Banks' abilities that this book is even readable considering how awkward it feels. As one can see from other reviews, it's probably his least liked book, and while I didn't hate it as much as the others seem to, I'm not going to go and claim that it's his masterpiece. It has an interesting premise, a near future where involves a rather complicated seeming political situation that somehow involves the Panama canal. Why are we at the canal? Because the main character, a Japanese cello player can't bring herself to fly anywhere so she's taking a ship to Europe. The main character is probably where the trouble starts, he does his best to give her some sort of personality through loads of actually rather striking backstory (his plotting skills may be off in this book but he sure can write and pull out a memorable scene) but the character comes off as rather isolated and distant and it's never really explained why she's that way. Even with the backstory, her motivations are a bit clouded (I can understand her fear of flying but why such an extreme reaction?). Also, he keeps throwing in absolutely bizarre dream sequences that while more like most people's dream sequences (ie they make no sense) they also seem to have no relation to the action at hand which makes them interesting reading but rather irrelevant. I haven't even touched on the plot itself . . . basically during the voyage while they're stuck in the canal, a bunch of terrorists take over the ship . . . and without giving too much away it doesn't go well (he gets bonus points for an inventive use for grenades, talk about style) and our cello player suddenly turns into Bruce Willis. Then the book ends. So all the pieces are there, but they just aren't put together well. So what's good about it? The writing itself is excellent, some of his best descriptions are here and as I mentioned earlier, he has a good eye for setting a striking scene. The book itself isn't that long, which means even if you don't enjoy it, it'll be over soon, so he gets points for not dragging out something that wasn't going too well to begin with. So the book mostly succeeds in little moments, flashbacks and small scenes and the like, but when you put it all together, it doesn't hold all that well. Oh well, he can't hit it out of the park every time. Obviously not the book to go for if you're trying to introduce someone to him, it makes for a quick read on its own and there's enough decent stuff to recommend it to fans, even if they'll have no reason to read it more than once.
Rating: 
Summary: Alastair MacLean
Review: Somewhat disappointing at first, even though I haven't been exactly gung-ho about Iain Banks before now, but the unfolding plot is exciting enough if rather derivative of Alastair MacLean or Frederick Forsyth. The book has many shortcomings - the greatest of which, in my view, is the poncey proliferation of Japanese and Spanish words and the insistence that we should know the author has spent time in both Japan and Panamá. However, Banks' well-observed writing contains poetry that ends by captivating one, and the dream portrayals (which I usually skip in fiction) are sufficiently non-cohesive and unexplained to inspire admiration. Two further major criticisms: we do not need the heroine to have had a (page-padding) tortured past - she could surely be made interesting enough without abortion, murder and madness - and whoever is responsible for the inane blurb on the back of my 1994 paperback edition deserves to be subjected to all the horrible torments so blithely described there. Fortunately for us, this is not just another action adventure.
Rating:
Summary: _The_ worst Iain Banks book (phew!)
Review: Sorry, but this is really poor. How disappointed was I? Enormously. This reads like 'Iain would really like one of his books to be made into a film, so keep it nice and simple'. None of the usual dark humuor, or the subtle twists that make him a page turner. Just a dull, 'thriller'. Buy anything else by Banks (trust me!), but avoid this.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad!
Review: Surely, when Iain Banks was writing this, he realised that it wasn't working. I've read most of his other books and enjoyed all of them, but this was terrible.
Most Banks books have a likeable or at least sympathetic main character. This book didn't. It didn't even have a character you could dislike. Hisako was a middle-aged, japanese professional cello player. I'm sure we can all identify with that...
Second problem, the cast of other characters. They don't stick around long (avoiding any spoilers) and you don't really miss them when they're gone.
Third problem - the believability test. Hisako is a mild-mannered musician terrified of aeroplanes. By the end of the book she is an action hero, single-handedly killing a small army of men. Even Jack Higgins could do better than that!
Forth problem - the book is too short. Maybe the story could have worked if it had gone on a bit longer. (On the other hand, the shortness of the book was one of the few reasons why I stuck with it to the end.)
Fifth problem - a mixing of styles. It was an attempt to write a cross between a thriller and a horror story. It didn't work. And mixing paragraphs of character development and dream sequences in with the action isn't a sesnsible thing to do. In short, this is a bad book. It should never have been published and will do no good for Banks' reputation. Read something else of his, but give this one a wide berth.
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