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A review by friedchickensuicide
The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi
2.0
Sometimes in the matter of a sentence or two, a book can achieve a moment of pure beauty, which can elevate it to something beyond just a heist novel, Hard SF or any other conservative branding. Example:
I take her hand. She embraces me. She beats her wings and we rise up, through the glass sky, away from guns, memories and kings.
Similar sentences and passages of great beauty and wonder pepper this the narrative of this debut novel-which would be a great debut novel, if the people the sentences are about were half as interesting.
Yes, I give the author this: this is one hell of a world you have made up. The concepts, in accordance to Hard SF tradition, are all singularly brilliant. But if I am to actually sit down and really get into a story in which a thief escapes from a Dilemma prison to do a heist job breaking into the Oubliette for a Sobornost lady which involves endless entanglements with the Tzaddikim, the phoboi and the Cryptarchs, then you better open your damn gevulot a little bit more, that is, give the reader a little bit more information. For enormous stretches of the text, I'm just witness to action that I cannot understand, which is understandable when it happens on page 25 or page 50, but when you're having a problem figuring out what on earth is going on page 300, then you have a problem. I'm impressed by Rajaniemi's imagination and his undeniable intellect, but his storytelling skills need a bit of polish, I'd say. There are ideas here that I can ponder about for months, but getting through this book-which has the most elementary of pulp thriller plots, mind you-was a bit of a chore. It's not fun, even though there is always somebody shooting at somebody else.
Now that the world-building is done, hopefully the sequel will be an improvement.
I take her hand. She embraces me. She beats her wings and we rise up, through the glass sky, away from guns, memories and kings.
Similar sentences and passages of great beauty and wonder pepper this the narrative of this debut novel-which would be a great debut novel, if the people the sentences are about were half as interesting.
Yes, I give the author this: this is one hell of a world you have made up. The concepts, in accordance to Hard SF tradition, are all singularly brilliant. But if I am to actually sit down and really get into a story in which a thief escapes from a Dilemma prison to do a heist job breaking into the Oubliette for a Sobornost lady which involves endless entanglements with the Tzaddikim, the phoboi and the Cryptarchs, then you better open your damn gevulot a little bit more, that is, give the reader a little bit more information. For enormous stretches of the text, I'm just witness to action that I cannot understand, which is understandable when it happens on page 25 or page 50, but when you're having a problem figuring out what on earth is going on page 300, then you have a problem. I'm impressed by Rajaniemi's imagination and his undeniable intellect, but his storytelling skills need a bit of polish, I'd say. There are ideas here that I can ponder about for months, but getting through this book-which has the most elementary of pulp thriller plots, mind you-was a bit of a chore. It's not fun, even though there is always somebody shooting at somebody else.
Now that the world-building is done, hopefully the sequel will be an improvement.