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3.76 AVERAGE
3.76 AVERAGE
The book started in a little bit clunky way, and for a Finnish speaking reader especially the Finnish names were a bit jarring and slightly corny - but when the story picked up, it really picked up. Quantum Effect offers a truly different kind of scifi story, with interesting notions of personality, privacy and identity in a technologically and socially really alien future.
This one grew on me. Initially I disliked how the author dumped the reader into his world with little explanation, and threw around a bunch of made-up words that were impossible to guess at ("gevulot"?) but it didn't take too long for things to get explained. The writing is quite solid and assured in a way that means you never really notice it — it's just doing its job of telling the story. The story itself is pretty fun, hard-ish scifi with quite a lot of action, and explores a number of interesting ideas around privacy and identity. I was often reminded of Charlie Stross' Glasshouse. One minor quibble is that there were a few convenient points where the protagonist and his sidekick were too powerful for a supposedly dangerous situation, and so were too easily able to remove the danger. But overall an enjoyable read. I'll probably continue the series.
adventurous
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Reminds me positively of a modern stainless steel rat, but in a more fantastical space opera setting. It's fascinating seeing the different possible futures of humanity spread out across the solar system and interacting, from the mysterious Kuiper belters to the Kubernetes Dyson swarmers, to the RPG-ified utopia in the Jovian system. Very fun.
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
fast-paced
The criminal is a creative artist; detectives are just critics.
Often this series communicates only an impressionistic sense of what's going on, at best, and at times that's frustrating. I'd also prefer if the author stopped treating the word "quantum" like it's a linguistic seasoning to be applied liberally. But it's packed with interesting ideas: the Dilemma Prison at the outset, the "gevulot" privacy technology, the terrifying little phrase "cognitive rights management software"...
adventurous
challenging
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
O_o
I used Google to find out the meanings of some words and names because they are non-English. Plus, I read the first 100 pages, then I went back and started reading from the beginning once more.
Speaking for myself, if I hadn't studied programming and database concepts in college, and currently maintain a subscription to New Scientist magazine, I would not have understood most of this book. Not only does it throw you bodily and without apology or explanation into a future world of digital life akin to living within the Internet, it does so with author-created language and theoretical physics made into actual plot design. I suggest you also bone up on the latest black hole hologram/information articles for the general reader, not because you'll need that, but just because. Knowing something about myths and a little game theory is helpful. Basically, if you have picked up a little bit of this and that in the years you have read science magazines, this novel is cool.
That said, I loved this book! It projects itself as a mystery/science fiction mixed genre, but underneath it's a playful literary novel written by a Ph.D. who holds a doctorate in string theory. The author certainly doesn't talk us down or talk down to us - but it is a fully-fleshed novel with the digital world as the stage and quantum mechanics setting the rules.
Yikes!
However, difficult it is to start, I found the novel worth the effort. It is so full of ideas, the kind of ideas that give you that breathlessness similar to standing at the edge of an airplane's door preparing to jump, or looking down from a mountaintop just before you ski off several cliffs.
Some of the characters:
Archons are gleeful Prisoner's Dilemma game creators who barely understand that they maintain prisons here and there in space. Mieli, an extremely teched-out winged beauty, rescues a certain thief, called Jean le Flambeur, from such a punishment prison. Mieli's ship, Perhonen, grown from coral, is sentient. Isidore Beautrelet is a Martian city detective. The tzaddiks are a League of superheroes, patrolling the city of Oubliette. Oubliette is a Martian city with legs and it walks about. In it resides thousands of citizens, connected to the exomemory system, which is sort of an advanced Internet, but fortunately everyone also possesses an internal gevulot which permits the setting of mind privacy limits. Life would be ordinary, except for the danger of a race of beings called the Sobornost, whom no one knows much about but they seem scary. There are also the phoboi, things let loose on Mars during a civil war which definitely can be scary.
Some of the plot:
Isidore, while pursuing a murder case, becomes aware something much scarier is brewing in exomemory, and while pursuing leads, becomes involved with Mieli and the thief. Meanwhile, his girlfriend, Pixil, a member of the race called the zoku, who are immigrants who were permitted to move to Mars after a war which was perhaps with the Sobernost as the enemy, a war which destroyed their home world, is showing elements of her race's social beliefs that are very disturbing to Isidore. Plus, the zuko know more than they are telling.
Speaking for myself, I think I'll pass when the Singularity is here. The only way I'd be convinced to participate is if I get Engineering skills.
I used Google to find out the meanings of some words and names because they are non-English. Plus, I read the first 100 pages, then I went back and started reading from the beginning once more.
Speaking for myself, if I hadn't studied programming and database concepts in college, and currently maintain a subscription to New Scientist magazine, I would not have understood most of this book. Not only does it throw you bodily and without apology or explanation into a future world of digital life akin to living within the Internet, it does so with author-created language and theoretical physics made into actual plot design. I suggest you also bone up on the latest black hole hologram/information articles for the general reader, not because you'll need that, but just because. Knowing something about myths and a little game theory is helpful. Basically, if you have picked up a little bit of this and that in the years you have read science magazines, this novel is cool.
That said, I loved this book! It projects itself as a mystery/science fiction mixed genre, but underneath it's a playful literary novel written by a Ph.D. who holds a doctorate in string theory. The author certainly doesn't talk us down or talk down to us - but it is a fully-fleshed novel with the digital world as the stage and quantum mechanics setting the rules.
Yikes!
However, difficult it is to start, I found the novel worth the effort. It is so full of ideas, the kind of ideas that give you that breathlessness similar to standing at the edge of an airplane's door preparing to jump, or looking down from a mountaintop just before you ski off several cliffs.
Some of the characters:
Archons are gleeful Prisoner's Dilemma game creators who barely understand that they maintain prisons here and there in space. Mieli, an extremely teched-out winged beauty, rescues a certain thief, called Jean le Flambeur, from such a punishment prison. Mieli's ship, Perhonen, grown from coral, is sentient. Isidore Beautrelet is a Martian city detective. The tzaddiks are a League of superheroes, patrolling the city of Oubliette. Oubliette is a Martian city with legs and it walks about. In it resides thousands of citizens, connected to the exomemory system, which is sort of an advanced Internet, but fortunately everyone also possesses an internal gevulot which permits the setting of mind privacy limits. Life would be ordinary, except for the danger of a race of beings called the Sobornost, whom no one knows much about but they seem scary. There are also the phoboi, things let loose on Mars during a civil war which definitely can be scary.
Some of the plot:
Isidore, while pursuing a murder case, becomes aware something much scarier is brewing in exomemory, and while pursuing leads, becomes involved with Mieli and the thief. Meanwhile, his girlfriend, Pixil, a member of the race called the zoku, who are immigrants who were permitted to move to Mars after a war which was perhaps with the Sobernost as the enemy, a war which destroyed their home world, is showing elements of her race's social beliefs that are very disturbing to Isidore. Plus, the zuko know more than they are telling.
Speaking for myself, I think I'll pass when the Singularity is here. The only way I'd be convinced to participate is if I get Engineering skills.
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This one entranced me from the first chapter till the last. Hardest Sci-fi I've read yet... In fact it's so hard it loops back into becoming a fantasy with entities like Gods, Valkyries and what not. This keeps the trend of only banger reads for me this year. 4.75⭐️ , Third one this year.