I've now read more than half of the novel by that name from the author Iain M. Banks, who should be quite famous in this forum, and I've come across a passage which reminds a bit of Infinity. The basic story is that a strange object has appeared, and nobody knows where it's from. The only knowledge they have is that it had appeared a thousand years earlier to (although my memory deceives me on that number). It is found out that the object possesses a form of power management that could provide universe-hopping (travelling between universes) abilities to whoever could tame that power.
Overall the book is quite hard to read unless you have a good memory, or do a lot of skipping back and forth, as there are dozens [spelling error?] of characters that seem crucial to the storyline but are only around for a couple of chapters. Will probably require a re-read to clear a few things up (for me, anyway).
