A review by andrewspink
The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

This book was recommended to me as being the best science fiction novel written in recent years, so I had high expectations of it. Maybe my expectations were a little too high because that meant that I was rather disappointed. I really struggled for the first third or so. I was quite bewildered about what was going on. That was caused mainly because the author introduced a lot of interesting new concepts, but for some bizarre reason chose not to explain them until much later in the book and sometimes never. For example, 'Zokus' are mentioned frequently, but even when I searched through all of the book for references to Zoku, I could not find out who they are. Some concepts, such as exomemory, are reasonably clear from the name and context, but others like Quiet are just bewildering until either you are given enough information to work it out (a few chapters after the first mention), or you look it up elsewhere.
Indeed, at a given moment, I found a fan site with a glossary (https://exomemory.fandom.com/wiki/The_Quantum_Theif_Wiki) and then I could start looking concepts up. From that point on, the book began to make more sense and I enjoyed it more. The concepts were indeed interesting, and there were also relevant reflections on issues such as privacy and the nature of what it is to be human.