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3.76 AVERAGE
3.76 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
tense
medium-paced
This is a first novel. The first 30 pages or so are rough enough that I probably wouldn't have found out that a competently written story follows them.
The novel explores the idea of life after the technology to run a human personality within a computer has been perfected and goes into a lot of detail on the abuses likely to follow such a development. The approach is fresh and conveyed well, but sometimes the story suffers from an overload of exposition.
The saving grace is that the exposition after the first few chapters is exclusively done in a show-don't-tell fashion, so at least we have examples to play with rather than lectures.
The novel explores the idea of life after the technology to run a human personality within a computer has been perfected and goes into a lot of detail on the abuses likely to follow such a development. The approach is fresh and conveyed well, but sometimes the story suffers from an overload of exposition.
The saving grace is that the exposition after the first few chapters is exclusively done in a show-don't-tell fashion, so at least we have examples to play with rather than lectures.
This was a confusing book. Despite being very well written and evocative, I often had absolutely no idea what was going on. It’s the opposite of an infodump: Rajaniemi just tosses out terms left and right and assumes that the reader will understand or figure out what they mean. For some of them, I could, and for others, I really couldn’t. It made fight scenes, master plans, and detective investigations much harder to follow than they should have been (and sometimes I couldn’t figure them out at all), because I had no real idea what any of the technobabble meant. I found it took a lot more brainpower to read than many of the other books I’ve finished lately. Final verdict: I enjoyed the book enough to read to the end, but not enough to read the rest of the series.
Nanotech, AI,
Post-singularity heist:
My favorite things.
Post-singularity heist:
My favorite things.
‘The Quantum Thief’ by Hannu Rajaniemi is not an easy read at first. The reader is dumped immediately into a very confusing world full of terms that they have never heard. As is evident from many of the reviews here, this is where some readers put the book down for good. However, the confusion eventually ends and leads into a relatively conventional, though quite lyrical and entertaining, heist story. I say “relatively conventional” because it’s a heist plot that could be laid over any framework from fantasy, historical, contemporary, or science fiction. However, the details and word building are anything but conventional. In fact, the details that make the book so confusing at first also make it so very compelling in the end.
As noted, the early confusion in the book and its many invented terms turn off a significant number of readers. Personally, I believe Rajaniemi needed to invent terms to describe the concepts of embodied AI and nano/quantum technology. While all of this could have been explained in more conventional language, the novel terms do several things. First, they allow the story to move immediately into the action with little to no exposition (and, boy, does it move). Second, they convey to the reader the alienness of the characters experience in comparison to our own. Their world is very different from ours, and that’s immediately apparent. But third, as the reader learns the language, these terms also allow for a translation of that weird experience into something that the reader can understand. And lastly, to come to see that experience as something, if not quite mundane, that the characters are fully integrated with.
When reviewing a book, I often consider what about (or even whether) it sticks in my memory. Sometimes books are so potent that the whole thing hangs around (for me a book like ‘Solaris’ comes to mind). In this case, the world building, especially all of the weird ways of being, has embedded itself in my mind. The plot works, the characters are solid, the writing is lyrical, and the world is spectacular. In my opinion, it is well worth pushing through the initial difficulty of learning a whole new set of words and concepts. The reward is sweet indeed.
As noted, the early confusion in the book and its many invented terms turn off a significant number of readers. Personally, I believe Rajaniemi needed to invent terms to describe the concepts of embodied AI and nano/quantum technology. While all of this could have been explained in more conventional language, the novel terms do several things. First, they allow the story to move immediately into the action with little to no exposition (and, boy, does it move). Second, they convey to the reader the alienness of the characters experience in comparison to our own. Their world is very different from ours, and that’s immediately apparent. But third, as the reader learns the language, these terms also allow for a translation of that weird experience into something that the reader can understand. And lastly, to come to see that experience as something, if not quite mundane, that the characters are fully integrated with.
When reviewing a book, I often consider what about (or even whether) it sticks in my memory. Sometimes books are so potent that the whole thing hangs around (for me a book like ‘Solaris’ comes to mind). In this case, the world building, especially all of the weird ways of being, has embedded itself in my mind. The plot works, the characters are solid, the writing is lyrical, and the world is spectacular. In my opinion, it is well worth pushing through the initial difficulty of learning a whole new set of words and concepts. The reward is sweet indeed.
"There's someone stolen to steal a thing, which he can't steal, because he first must steal himself." And that's just the highest level of theft recursion going on in a perfectly complicated novel.
I haven't found a hard science fiction novel this exciting in years. Spun from Dangerous Science and dense with ideas - throwaway lines off of which lesser authors might base an entire narrative. With so much going on with the set dressing, I was mostly done before I took time to appreciate the character narrative.
Not a good introduction to modern hard SF. If you haven't cut your teeth on McDonald or Stross or Sterling, look there first. [5/29/12]
I haven't found a hard science fiction novel this exciting in years. Spun from Dangerous Science and dense with ideas - throwaway lines off of which lesser authors might base an entire narrative. With so much going on with the set dressing, I was mostly done before I took time to appreciate the character narrative.
Not a good introduction to modern hard SF. If you haven't cut your teeth on McDonald or Stross or Sterling, look there first. [5/29/12]
I spent most of this book not quite sure what was happening. Or perhaps, not caring to understand what was happening. It just did not work for me.
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
challenging
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
There are few books that ignite my imagination quite like this book. At first it was hard to get the rhythm of the author's voice. It is an interesting blend of science and story. And, like most of that genera, it is dense in parts. But once you hear that voice and fell the rhythm, everything else falls into place. Well, that's how it was for me, anyway.