From the back cover: In the year 2018, a daring bank robbery has taken place at Hayek Associates. The suspects are a band of marauding orcs, with a dragon in tow for fire support, and the bank is located within the virtual reality land of Avalon Four. But Sergeant Sue Smith discovers that this virtual world robbery may be linked to some real world devastation.The story is told from the perspective of three characters (and in the second-person style of video game instructions). There's Sargeant Sue Smith of Edinburgh's finest; Elaine Barnaby, a forensic accountant; game-developer Jack Reed (who has a few well-hidden secrets). This techno-crime thriller has a number interesting ideas (some of which are waaaay esoteric). Along the way, there are various terms like LARP, griefing, and nerfing that it helps to be aware of. It's pretty cool and of course, as the characters start digging into the mystery, it gets bigger and more dangerous. Although I'm not a gamer, I enjoyed the story, but I imagine gamers would get even more out of it. Much of the author's ideas seem all too plausible. ( )

Great book that is done a disservice by its geeky plot blurb of "virtual robbery with orcs". I put a lot of faith in his Hugo nominations and am glad now that I did. Stross has an almost fanatical attention to detail when using technology in his stories that you can see just as easily being replaced by "tech" filler as with Star Trek (something Ron Moore talked about in a speech, and that Stross wrote a lengthy blog post about). This aids credibility and readability to his story, and makes his work feel a lot like a higher-tech William Gibson, a writer I really enjoy. I specifically liked the idea of LARP spy networks in the story. I don't know if he invented the idea, or just made it his own, but it worked great as a plot device.

I thought the author's use of multiple viewpoints made the story jumpy, but generally worked well with the exception of the policewoman, who I felt was too far away from his other characters. ( )

While I love the near-future setting and the overly monitored world, I'm a little put off by the second-person narrative. While it ties in neatly with the MMOPRG suject matter, it is kind of jarring and gimmicky to read. ( )

http://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2009/09... ( )

The latest in my light summer reading series is a cyberpunk novel. You will note the cool, trendy, inappropriate capitalization in the title. It has a blurb from William Gibson on the cover. William Gibson is the Pete Seeger of cyberpunk. All the cyberpunks go to him for his blessing, just like the folkies get their records blessed by Pete.

Halting State is a near-future novel. One in which, not surprisingly, the internet has penetrated every facet of people's lives. It starts with a virtual reality bank robbery committed by a bunch of orcs and a dragon. The poor non-gaming cop, in Edinburgh, Scotland of all places, who takes the call, is nonplussed, even though she wears he interfacing glasses and operates in "cop space" all the time. Everyone wears these glasses that give them access to GPS, their address book, email, virual reality games, etc. through their web 3.whatever mobile phones. Cops have their own channel which gives personal information, including rap sheets, of everyone everywhere.



There is a bit of fantasy roll playing, some techophiliac nerdlings, a bit of international intrigue, some cyber crime, quite a lot of action and violence, a touch of love, a bit of implied sex, tastefully handled in a 1940 Hollywood sort of way, something for everyone. I particularly liked the way people were slightly disoriented when the net went down and they didn't have their GPS stream telling them were they were. Just think 20 years ago people could find the bus stop on their own.

I'll Never Forget The Day I Read A Book!