You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.

zivan's profile picture

zivan 's review for:

Rule 34 by Charles Stross
4.0

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.