In Iain Banks's The Steep Approach to Garbadale, members of the sprawling Wopuld family -- inventors and beneficiaries of the fabulously profitable board game Empire! -- debate whether to sell their game to an American company. The novel is typical Banks: smoothly written and nicely plotted, with a self-aware and clever protagonist. It also has an eleventh-hour twist, which both drives the story and reveals its hollow core. The revelation certainly explains many of the characters' actions, but it feels cheap and even simplistic; so that's what this was all about?

What's most disappointing is that the book could have been about so much more. I thought the novel would focus primarily on the generational transfer of a family business. The succession does play a role in the novel, but only as a cosmetic matter, a framing device for the twist. Banks seems to spend as little time as possible on the complicated emotions that almost always surround such a change. As a result, Garbadale ends up being a diverting but ultimately forgettable book.

Copyright © 2009 Steven Wu