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3.59 AVERAGE
3.59 AVERAGE
Rule 34 isn't exactly a sequel to Halting State , it is in the same universe, there are familiar characters and the world is familiar, but it has a standalone plot. You do not have to read Halting State before Rule 34 to enjoy it.
I'm happy to report that Rule 34 doesn't suffer from stale sequel syndrome. I enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed Halting State.
The third person style of writing takes a bit of getting used to, but I listened to Rule 34 as an audiobook and it didn't disturb me.
As an audiobook you also get the book read to you in a Scottish accent which adds to the humor. I know it's a bit racist but accents can add to humor.
Choosing accents for Rule 34 was a bit problematic as many characters aren't native Scots.
How do you do an accent for a Muslim born in Scotland to immigrant parents or even grandparents? I found that I didn't always agree with the choice of accent, but the different voices and accents made it easier to distinguish between different characters all written in third person.
I liked the Muslim hero/antihero character, it was nice to have a Muslim character that is first and foremost a person with regular (well perhaps in his case serious but regular human) weaknesses that also happens to be Muslim.
I'm happy to report that Rule 34 doesn't suffer from stale sequel syndrome. I enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed Halting State.
The third person style of writing takes a bit of getting used to, but I listened to Rule 34 as an audiobook and it didn't disturb me.
As an audiobook you also get the book read to you in a Scottish accent which adds to the humor. I know it's a bit racist but accents can add to humor.
Choosing accents for Rule 34 was a bit problematic as many characters aren't native Scots.
How do you do an accent for a Muslim born in Scotland to immigrant parents or even grandparents? I found that I didn't always agree with the choice of accent, but the different voices and accents made it easier to distinguish between different characters all written in third person.
I liked the Muslim hero/antihero character, it was nice to have a Muslim character that is first and foremost a person with regular (well perhaps in his case serious but regular human) weaknesses that also happens to be Muslim.
This is a police procedural novel set in Edinburgh, capital of the independent nation of Scotland, some time in the very near future - "near future" as in about 10 years from today, i.e., 2013. This is a future of "3-D" copy machines, near artificial intelligence, and globalization and surveillance gone wild. The story follows Borders and Lothian Detective Inspector Liz Cavanaugh as she is sucked into a highly improbable murder of a person loosely connected to local organized crime.
Liz's usual beat is "Rule 34" violations, which are an internet geek in-joke that have become highly possible and hugely disruptive. "Rule 34" is the internet canard that there is nothing so improbably, unlikely or disgusting that someone hasn't turned it into internet porn. The problem in this near-future is that wild ideas in a society of "replicators" and social fracture and globalization can be imitated by many people very quickly and create all kinds of new dysfunctions.
Because of her Rule 34 beat, Liz learns that other internet scam artists are being liquidated in other parts of Europe. This lead to the introduction of a disgraced Interpol cop - who had a hand in Liz's disgrace a few years before this story - and the two start investigating as other wildly improbable deaths of various internet criminals start showing up. The deaths are all incredibly complex and improbable, and seem to disclose a superhuman ability to plan and/or alter probabilities to bring together circumstances that lead to fatal accidents. They also seem to involve people who are somehow involved in phishing and spamming. In the near future, spamming is the essential industry for criminal enterprise because they need to advertise somehow, and in order to advertise they have interest people with their advertisements, which means getting past the future's highly-developed spam filters, which means developing something that approximates artificial intelligence.
Stross also populates his story with other viewpoint characters. There is Anwar Hussein, a con recently released from prison for his spamming frauds, who has been talked into becoming the honorary consul for the Independent Republic of Issyk-Kulistan. (It is a tribute to Stross's braiding of his story into our world that there really is an Issyk-Kulistan.) There is also the Toymaker, a sociopath who represents the criminal Organization that supplies things that people want and needs the spammers to make people aware of what they want but can't get. There is also Colonel Datka and his boss Bhaskar, president of Khyrgistan, another real country, who seems to have something of a long game being played out.
Over the course of the story these threads develop, weave around each other and finally come together for a satisfying ending.
There were a few problematic elements. First, Stross seems to go out of his way to populate his book with casual, kinky sex. Anwar is unfaithful to his wife with men. One of the fulcrum character who links Anwar to other threads is the "Gnome," who is one of Anwar's homosexual assignations. Liz is a lesbian. One of the fulcrum characters who brings together various threads is Dorthy, one of Liz's lesbian lovers. Dorothy hooks up with the Toymaker for a night of casual sex, involving sado-masochism and "safe words," After he gets what he wants, he casually tosses her out of his apartment, making her feel devalued and used, which gets her to consider whether she was really "raped." The first murder seems to involve some kind of masochistic self-bondage. Stross is either pitching this book for the libertine left, or, perhaps, he is making a point about the continuing deterioration of conventional morality in the near future, or he really thinks all this is normal. I don't think this is a particular issue, because it does seem to project the near-future quality that Stross is aiming at, but for anyone with particular moral issues that this kind of thing might offend, forewarned is fore-armed. For my part, I found the characters' politically correct post-prandial recriminations tiresome.
Another problematic aspect of the book was its use of a second person perspective at the beginning of various chapters. That was confusing and disrupted the flow of the story. It seems that there is a reason for that perspective, which is alluded to by the end of the book. however, that leads to the third problematic feature of the book, namely, the crime was never solved. Things to wrap up, and the Lothian and Borders Police Force think they have gotten their man, but the truth seems to be that there is something else floating around the global electronic ecosystem.
But that may be an issue for a future book.
The story works as both a police procedural and a view of things we may live to see. The story was interesting and gripping, and, as with all of Stross's books to date, I feel it fully justified my investment of time and money.
Liz's usual beat is "Rule 34" violations, which are an internet geek in-joke that have become highly possible and hugely disruptive. "Rule 34" is the internet canard that there is nothing so improbably, unlikely or disgusting that someone hasn't turned it into internet porn. The problem in this near-future is that wild ideas in a society of "replicators" and social fracture and globalization can be imitated by many people very quickly and create all kinds of new dysfunctions.
Because of her Rule 34 beat, Liz learns that other internet scam artists are being liquidated in other parts of Europe. This lead to the introduction of a disgraced Interpol cop - who had a hand in Liz's disgrace a few years before this story - and the two start investigating as other wildly improbable deaths of various internet criminals start showing up. The deaths are all incredibly complex and improbable, and seem to disclose a superhuman ability to plan and/or alter probabilities to bring together circumstances that lead to fatal accidents. They also seem to involve people who are somehow involved in phishing and spamming. In the near future, spamming is the essential industry for criminal enterprise because they need to advertise somehow, and in order to advertise they have interest people with their advertisements, which means getting past the future's highly-developed spam filters, which means developing something that approximates artificial intelligence.
Stross also populates his story with other viewpoint characters. There is Anwar Hussein, a con recently released from prison for his spamming frauds, who has been talked into becoming the honorary consul for the Independent Republic of Issyk-Kulistan. (It is a tribute to Stross's braiding of his story into our world that there really is an Issyk-Kulistan.) There is also the Toymaker, a sociopath who represents the criminal Organization that supplies things that people want and needs the spammers to make people aware of what they want but can't get. There is also Colonel Datka and his boss Bhaskar, president of Khyrgistan, another real country, who seems to have something of a long game being played out.
Over the course of the story these threads develop, weave around each other and finally come together for a satisfying ending.
There were a few problematic elements. First, Stross seems to go out of his way to populate his book with casual, kinky sex. Anwar is unfaithful to his wife with men. One of the fulcrum character who links Anwar to other threads is the "Gnome," who is one of Anwar's homosexual assignations. Liz is a lesbian. One of the fulcrum characters who brings together various threads is Dorthy, one of Liz's lesbian lovers. Dorothy hooks up with the Toymaker for a night of casual sex, involving sado-masochism and "safe words," After he gets what he wants, he casually tosses her out of his apartment, making her feel devalued and used, which gets her to consider whether she was really "raped." The first murder seems to involve some kind of masochistic self-bondage. Stross is either pitching this book for the libertine left, or, perhaps, he is making a point about the continuing deterioration of conventional morality in the near future, or he really thinks all this is normal. I don't think this is a particular issue, because it does seem to project the near-future quality that Stross is aiming at, but for anyone with particular moral issues that this kind of thing might offend, forewarned is fore-armed. For my part, I found the characters' politically correct post-prandial recriminations tiresome.
Another problematic aspect of the book was its use of a second person perspective at the beginning of various chapters. That was confusing and disrupted the flow of the story. It seems that there is a reason for that perspective, which is alluded to by the end of the book. however, that leads to the third problematic feature of the book, namely, the crime was never solved. Things to wrap up, and the Lothian and Borders Police Force think they have gotten their man, but the truth seems to be that there is something else floating around the global electronic ecosystem.
But that may be an issue for a future book.
The story works as both a police procedural and a view of things we may live to see. The story was interesting and gripping, and, as with all of Stross's books to date, I feel it fully justified my investment of time and money.
Rule 34 is the second of Stross's near-future police procedurals, taking today's information infrastructure into the next logical (significant) step, seeing where that leaves the police and the criminal world, and them pitting them against each other.
This was fun. The thinking is twisted here, as our protagonist runs the "rule 34" squad in her police headquarters --- the guys who try to stamp out the most vile of online pornography. That's not really the focus of the book, but it sets a tone and lets you know that twisted stuff is not off the table. And it makes the first half of the book really (oddly) enjoyable.
The narrative follows a few primary characters, and a handful of minor characters in Stross's now-familiar second-person form. The first time I read this style it really threw me off, but I'm getting the hang of it now and don't even really notice.
As seems to be true of most books I read, the ending felt rushed; I think many authors see their deadlines approach and really speed through the back halves of their books. But the confusion I had at the end of Stross's prior "Halting State" didn't happen (he's either writing better, or I was warned and paid closer attention).
But despite that all, this is a great picture of what-might-be sometime in the next thirty years or so. I like these glimpses of the future, when it's a future I might actually live to see, and Rule 34 really shines in that light.
4 of 5 stars.
This was fun. The thinking is twisted here, as our protagonist runs the "rule 34" squad in her police headquarters --- the guys who try to stamp out the most vile of online pornography. That's not really the focus of the book, but it sets a tone and lets you know that twisted stuff is not off the table. And it makes the first half of the book really (oddly) enjoyable.
The narrative follows a few primary characters, and a handful of minor characters in Stross's now-familiar second-person form. The first time I read this style it really threw me off, but I'm getting the hang of it now and don't even really notice.
As seems to be true of most books I read, the ending felt rushed; I think many authors see their deadlines approach and really speed through the back halves of their books. But the confusion I had at the end of Stross's prior "Halting State" didn't happen (he's either writing better, or I was warned and paid closer attention).
But despite that all, this is a great picture of what-might-be sometime in the next thirty years or so. I like these glimpses of the future, when it's a future I might actually live to see, and Rule 34 really shines in that light.
4 of 5 stars.
The usual technophilic and rather-pleased-with-itself Charles Stross read. Not that I didn't enjoy it, but some aspects of it were a bit too dark for me. Points for the integration of 3D-printers and "cop space" software into the storyline. Also points for the female lead and much of the characterization.
It's definitely the type of book you tend to rate on points, though. Whether that's good or bad is up to you, or the bot that's tracking you.
It's definitely the type of book you tend to rate on points, though. Whether that's good or bad is up to you, or the bot that's tracking you.
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/11123628
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/11123628
Wow--Charlie is really coming into his own. Most excellent (obvious disclaimer: I do know the author socially).
The book works as a straight-up thriller, and it weaves multiple point of views together well. But the really fun, unsettling thing is the world as Charlie sees it, which is to say our everyday world in too few years, with certain elements extrapolated just far enough out to make one really uncomfortable. International intrigue and corporate crime, murder and sex, Internet memes and sock puppets, all mixed up together so that you get the shock of recognition, together with a nasty feeling of "ooh, ick, things really could work out that way. Blurgh."
A tossed-off reference to "Greenspan favelas" is perfect, an updated nod to the Hoovervilles of the 1930s with an international twist (thanks a bunch, say the Brazilians). It's part of Charlie's post-various-bubbles world, with new technologies and habits sprouting from diminished resources and expectations.
There is one throwaway line that's going to stay with me forever, though. "Right now, she's exuding more quiet menace than Keanu Reeves in The Godfather remake."
Shudder. You're a sick, sick man, Charlie.
The book works as a straight-up thriller, and it weaves multiple point of views together well. But the really fun, unsettling thing is the world as Charlie sees it, which is to say our everyday world in too few years, with certain elements extrapolated just far enough out to make one really uncomfortable. International intrigue and corporate crime, murder and sex, Internet memes and sock puppets, all mixed up together so that you get the shock of recognition, together with a nasty feeling of "ooh, ick, things really could work out that way. Blurgh."
A tossed-off reference to "Greenspan favelas" is perfect, an updated nod to the Hoovervilles of the 1930s with an international twist (thanks a bunch, say the Brazilians). It's part of Charlie's post-various-bubbles world, with new technologies and habits sprouting from diminished resources and expectations.
There is one throwaway line that's going to stay with me forever, though. "Right now, she's exuding more quiet menace than Keanu Reeves in The Godfather remake."
Shudder. You're a sick, sick man, Charlie.
funny
fast-paced
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
NIce to see the return of the Halting State world and the Police Investigations in a situation which tech is just beyond what I know and still feel I almost understand it. The tone of the book is great fun and the mixture of Crime Drama and Sci Fi works really well especially in the Edinburgh setting.
I really enjoyed some of the futuristic aspects of this book, and I really enjoyed the character perspectives and that the book branched out from the original three character perspectives. On the downside, it was a complicated read, which wasn't helped by the 2nd person tense, which was quite confusing at times. I was also not satisfied with the end. Although many of the loose ends came together, there was a lot unexplained, at least in my head.
Stross's first miss for me. Overall idea of the story was interesting, didn't care for the details.