susanatherly's review
4.0
Loved this story! Warning: contains lots of quantum physics and swearing. Lots of "discussions" on testicle size.
titusfortner's review
3.0
Interesting world building, but a few too many extra things thrown into this mix for a complicated one off heist story. Almost a DNF. Graciously rounding up to 3 stars.
fredicia's review
4.0
The science fiction was well thought out, but I wish it could have been integrated into heisting more
danielmbensen's review
4.0
I hadn't found a space opera I liked in a long time, so I was very happy to find Künsken's big, frenetic, furious book. The beginning is a bit cluttered and unfocused. I got the impression that this was one of those projects that the author began back in high school, with an immense, complicated future history (Quebec colonizes Venus??) and the detailed back-stories for each of the characters. I felt like I was reading the second book in a series, but since I often skip the first book of serieses, I liked it.
The Quantum Magician is a heist novel, following a renegade GM quantum theoretician as he puts together a team to aid a rebel uprising. That plot gets a bit lost in its own ornamentation, but it's saved by the recurring theme of revolt against the forces that made us. How do genetically engineered humans deal with their artificial instincts to fulfill their creators' wishes? How do nations deal with their own histories? People and their mistakes? The only thing I felt the book was missing was children.
Also, I had a dream about this book, though probably not the nightmare that Künsken would have wanted.
The Quantum Magician is a heist novel, following a renegade GM quantum theoretician as he puts together a team to aid a rebel uprising. That plot gets a bit lost in its own ornamentation, but it's saved by the recurring theme of revolt against the forces that made us. How do genetically engineered humans deal with their artificial instincts to fulfill their creators' wishes? How do nations deal with their own histories? People and their mistakes? The only thing I felt the book was missing was children.
Also, I had a dream about this book, though probably not the nightmare that Künsken would have wanted.
reader_lisener's review
adventurous
challenging
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault
arhgee's review
5.0
Really enjoyed this book and it's sequel. The Quantum Evolution books hearken back to the post-human genre popular in the 2000s and the Afro-futurism of Alastair Reynolds. Would recommend.
johnwillson's review
5.0
Very engaging writing. The disparate sci-fi concepts all, through the events of the story, end up saying something about the nature of consciousness, personhood and/or morality.
snazel's review
4.0
Really effective twisty heist where you never know what the real-real-real-real plan is, a vivid cast of characters, and a fascinating SF world with no aliens, but humans bio-engineered to the point that really you can't tell. (No bio-engineer in this world has ever glanced at an ethics class.) Page-turner to read that legit kept me distracted at the covid-test clinic, for which I will be forever grateful.
There is some really fascinating care put into the impact that bio-engineering would have on a culture once you start messing with both bodies and brains and that leads me into point two of this.
This is a spoiler but is a huge aspect of the plot so uh, the Puppets and Numen. I stayed up to finish the book (because heist! And I needed to know what happened!) and then I had to stay up and play music for another hour so my exhausted brain wouldn't replay the scenes that I had just read. Very well-written, very vivid, i'm-not-used-to-reading-books-for-adults stuff!
What a good heist though, I wish Marie every joy and all the explosives.
There is some really fascinating care put into the impact that bio-engineering would have on a culture once you start messing with both bodies and brains and that leads me into point two of this.
This is a spoiler but is a huge aspect of the plot so uh, the Puppets and Numen.
Spoiler
I should mention that a lot of the plot turns on an entire race of people who were enslaved and bio-engineered as to view other people (also bio-engineered) as gods, who then took that to its logical conclusion, rose up and enslaved their gods to keep them from destroying themselves. While also trying to synthesize the holy scriptures that are every word spoken by their enslaving, and then enslaved, gods. While being biochemically unable to leave their gods or really reform their scriptures because of the way they've been bioengineered. This is a really interesting idea pushed to its logical end-point and where it ends is an entire masochistic and sadistic (and slave-owning) society that is unable to meaningfully give or receive content because of the bioengineering, some plot points that are real close to body horror, and a character who went into his part of the con expecting to die (more spoiler) that you're relieved at the very end they manage to kill instead of the sickening horror of staying alive in his captivity.What a good heist though, I wish Marie every joy and all the explosives.
thinde's review
3.0
The style is classic hard Sci-Fi. I could try to make myself sound smart by analyzing the central premise that was based on the quantum observer effect, but I'm not a fan of that misused theory. A reader may choose to allow the science to wash over them and still be able to enjoy the story.
The story is that of a con-man and one impossible job. It's got the usual stages, putting the gang together, meeting the mark, threats, betrayal, and of course the main deception... the one performed on the reader.
In the end, it only just holds enough to entice the reader forward. The science is interesting, the characters are unique and the challenges are momentous. Where it falls down is in its lack of emotional impact. Each of the gang is supposedly striving toward something so important that they'd risk their lives, but none of those things was important to me at a gut level. Thus it left me feeling flat.
The story is that of a con-man and one impossible job. It's got the usual stages, putting the gang together, meeting the mark, threats, betrayal, and of course the main deception... the one performed on the reader.
In the end, it only just holds enough to entice the reader forward. The science is interesting, the characters are unique and the challenges are momentous. Where it falls down is in its lack of emotional impact. Each of the gang is supposedly striving toward something so important that they'd risk their lives, but none of those things was important to me at a gut level. Thus it left me feeling flat.