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3.59 AVERAGE
3.59 AVERAGE
I really liked Halting State, but I found this very disappointing. It felt like the author was trying to write a book with all of the same elements as Halting State - a police force that uses a lot of surveillance, an investigation of crimes instigated on the internet, an exploration of near-future (or current cutting-edge) technology, some gory dark humor, and fast-paced action. It has the same elements, but they just don't cohere, and the book was confusing in places and just didn't keep me interested.
Eh. I was on a Charlie Stross binge. It's a middling sci-fi book. Feels like a bunch of things happen, and then ~70% the way in, an actual end goal is put in. But it ends without actually being clear what's actually going on. Perhaps too hidden for me?
Set in the same world as Halting State, things have gone downhill since then, it's very much used future, edging toward dystopia.
The story is told from multiple viewpoints, the first of the 3 major ones being a cynical Detective Inspector, Liz Kavanaugh, who we met as a rising star in Halting State. Her star is on the wane now as a result of the events in that book. The other two are Anwar, a small time crook who has gotten in way over his head and the mysterious Toymaker, who runs a rather unpleasant criminal syndicate. Their stories start to interconnect when a ex-con known to DI Kavanaugh is found murdered in a rather unusual manner.
Things rapidly go South from there, and the body count goes through the roof and conspiracies start to pile up in a rather nasty trainwreck.
I found the twist at the end a bit obvious and disappointing. It's almost as if Stross were ticking the Cyberpunk thriller boxes and found he'd left a cliché out, so he shoved it in there.
Overall a good read, if disappointing at the end. Not Stross's best, certainly not as good as Halting State or the Laundry books, but still it was interesting to revisit the alternate future (or is it past now) of Halting State.
NOTE: this review was first published on Amazon.co.uk
The story is told from multiple viewpoints, the first of the 3 major ones being a cynical Detective Inspector, Liz Kavanaugh, who we met as a rising star in Halting State. Her star is on the wane now as a result of the events in that book. The other two are Anwar, a small time crook who has gotten in way over his head and the mysterious Toymaker, who runs a rather unpleasant criminal syndicate. Their stories start to interconnect when a ex-con known to DI Kavanaugh is found murdered in a rather unusual manner.
Things rapidly go South from there, and the body count goes through the roof and conspiracies start to pile up in a rather nasty trainwreck.
I found the twist at the end a bit obvious and disappointing. It's almost as if Stross were ticking the Cyberpunk thriller boxes and found he'd left a cliché out, so he shoved it in there.
Overall a good read, if disappointing at the end. Not Stross's best, certainly not as good as Halting State or the Laundry books, but still it was interesting to revisit the alternate future (or is it past now) of Halting State.
NOTE: this review was first published on Amazon.co.uk
This was okay. But the main part of the story was good. It is written in the first person which is a bit weird at first but you get used to it.
Stross is back in form with the sequel to Halting State, a grimly humorous cyberpunk police procedural set in Tomorrow's Scotland, where nobody knows what an honest job is anymore, and household appliances are murdering spammers.
I won't spoil the book, but Stross is at his best when he takes Big Ideas, twists them upside down, and shows you how they could happen. In Rule 34, he on the relationship between the police state and the Panopticon, and how at the end of the day, our system of laws requires a technological architecture capable of enforcing what the politicians put in place. Business, crime, and government are melding together in Stross' world, something which seems all too familiar given the revolving door between Wall Street, the White House, the CIA, and a shallow grave in Central Asia. And Detective Liz's memetic crime unit seems like something that we already need, given public hysteria about synthetic drugs like Spice and Bath Salts (or maybe we could, you know, legalize drugs that have a long history of Not Totally Fucking People Up, instead of putting police and black chemists in a Red Queen's Race, with ordinary drug users the losers.)
The style is dense, packed full of internet-speak and Scottish brogue, but it's Stross's native tongue and the style fits perfectly. It's a throwback to old-school cyberpunk eyeball kicks, and a welcome diversion from the usual fair. The soapboxes rants at the end are a new and useful perspective on security and power.
I won't spoil the book, but Stross is at his best when he takes Big Ideas, twists them upside down, and shows you how they could happen. In Rule 34, he on the relationship between the police state and the Panopticon, and how at the end of the day, our system of laws requires a technological architecture capable of enforcing what the politicians put in place. Business, crime, and government are melding together in Stross' world, something which seems all too familiar given the revolving door between Wall Street, the White House, the CIA, and a shallow grave in Central Asia. And Detective Liz's memetic crime unit seems like something that we already need, given public hysteria about synthetic drugs like Spice and Bath Salts (or maybe we could, you know, legalize drugs that have a long history of Not Totally Fucking People Up, instead of putting police and black chemists in a Red Queen's Race, with ordinary drug users the losers.)
The style is dense, packed full of internet-speak and Scottish brogue, but it's Stross's native tongue and the style fits perfectly. It's a throwback to old-school cyberpunk eyeball kicks, and a welcome diversion from the usual fair. The soapboxes rants at the end are a new and useful perspective on security and power.
The book is written in second person, which at times makes it a bit harder to read than necessary, but once you've gotten used to the style the book very quickly becomes an excellent "what if.." based on today's online malarkey.
The book is at times written for insiders (local slang, local placenames, lots of internet memes) which will both date the book and make it more inaccessible for people outside the cultural referance frame.
Still, the plot and the "what if..." makes up for a lot of that. I relly enjoyed this book.
The book is at times written for insiders (local slang, local placenames, lots of internet memes) which will both date the book and make it more inaccessible for people outside the cultural referance frame.
Still, the plot and the "what if..." makes up for a lot of that. I relly enjoyed this book.
Any story that follows at least seven different characters and is told entirely in the 2nd person would drive me mad. Stross is also guilty of pages worth of infodumps about made-up AIs. His characters' internal monologues are nearly indistinguishable and utilize strained, over-long metaphors that aren't nearly as clever as Stross thinks they are. The characters themselves are each a unique blend of characteristics, but in the end the only one I was even slightly interested in was the psychopath criminal, which I doubt was intended. And the AI's pov is the stupidest one I've heard yet.
So no, I didn't like this. It gets 2 stars from me on the basis that Stross is clearly trying to use new character types and I liked the economics subplot. But overall I found this to be turgid, boring, and a serious slog to get through.
So no, I didn't like this. It gets 2 stars from me on the basis that Stross is clearly trying to use new character types and I liked the economics subplot. But overall I found this to be turgid, boring, and a serious slog to get through.