Sunday, February 19, 2012

The Quantum Thief

I mentioned I was reading this in a previous post. There have been lots of reviews: inventive hard SF; hard to understand due to an extreme policy of show-not-tell - these are typical comments.

I think it almost works - it's not quite a page-turner even for readers who are happy with all the post-humanist tropes and jargon. The fault lies, I think, with the plotting. It's too stop-start and disconnected so there's not a clear good-guy side you can empathise with and cheer on.

Putting it another way, the novel is too much a cerebral puzzle and not enough of a quest.

Volume 2 of the trilogy, The Fractal Prince, is out in September.