A review by agawilmot
The Causal Angel by Hannu Rajaniemi

2.0

I desperately wanted to love all three of these books, but following an intriguing first entry I found the series to be one of diminishing returns. This is due, chiefly, to the fact that beneath the staggering intellect on display and an absolute glut of ideas—all fascinating—Rajaniemi forgot to include characters with some, or for that matter any degree of depth (and the only character I did find interesting, the ship Perhonen, is killed off in the second book). Additionally, so much of the narrative takes place in the abstract, so as to remove all sense of weight and scope to the proceedings. I mean, Jupiter and Mars are destroyed, earth is overrun by wildcode, yet none of it hits—none of it has any impact beyond the conceptual. The same goes for character deaths, which again feel like ideas sketched out on paper and not like events that have actually taken place within the confines of the narrative.

By the end of the third book, I felt as if I'd read an academic dissertation on a science fiction trilogy, and not the books themselves. This is cold, clinical work, and I was thoroughly disappointed by it.