Seems like now Rankin has retired you-know-who, the science-fiction writers of Edinburgh have stepped in to replace him. This is the second book I've read this month which melds science-fiction and detective themes in a near-future Edinburgh. This one's pretty good; it starts with an in-game robbery in a future version of World of Warcraft, and proceeds to get more serious, fast. It moves along at a decent pace with a few plot twists, lots of inside-jokes and references that you'll need to be a tech geek or at least a casual gamer to understand. Stross is a decent writer and he's created a believable and entertaining future world. I'm glad to see that he's writing a sequel.

http://lampbane.livejournal.com/518915.html

"This book is excellent and I would readily endorse it over the other [2008] Hugo nominee I read, The Yiddish Policemen's Union. There's a quote on the front from the New York Times about Stross' ability to conceive of a future that could exist in "six, sixty, or six hundred years," and it's pretty much true. I am reminded of when I read Exit Strategy by Rushkoff, which I faulted for feeling too shortsighted. But the future Stross gives us feels entirely plausible, since it seems to almost fit into the world we live in now, just a little enhanced. The book takes place ten years from now, in 2018, and I'm curious how it will hold up then. The book is very tech-heavy, and given what I know personally it works pretty well. I'm not an expert, but Stross has a degree in CS and used to be a software engineer at one point." ( )

I found this an unusually difficult book to read. A few of the contributing factors:

- Stross writes in the 2nd person, present tense. The second person, in particular, is so unusual that I was distracted by it for about the first 100 pages.
- The second-person voice points at three different characters. So it takes longer than usual to get to know any particular one.
- All three characters speak and think in jargon. Programming jargon, gaming jargon, and police jargon is everywhere.
- The plot is complicated, with many secondary characters in addition to the three primaries. None of them understands what is going on.

The end result of all this is that I spent most of the book feeling hopelessly confused and frustrated. It was hard to tell when my confusion was due to unfamiliarity with some bit of jargon, or if I was supposed to be sharing a character's confusion.

After finishing the book and thinking about it for a day, I believe that there is lots of good stuff in here that I missed on a first read. Halting State is a realistic extrapolation of trends in communication technology, not some flight of fancy. And it teases out fascinating implications concerning the relationship between individuals and the state, and between individuals within a state. There's a lot to think about here, but I'd be better equipped to do that thinking if I understood more of what happened. ( )

I'm a a bit of a sucker for near future sci-fi and this novel, set in 2017, does not disappoint.

It follows the lives of three people as they get tangled up in a white collar crime that quickly descends into the depths of a darker world of international espionage.

The human element of the story carries through really well, the best I have read from Stross; I particularly like the story as told by Sue, a Glaswegian copper.

The novel explores some very important issues to do with cryptography and introduces many other technological marvels. His understand of how the electronic web can be brought out into the real world via smart phones is very insightful. In other ways I thought that the technology he describes would not be quite as widespread as he does, but it is small failing. ( )

Starts off well and promises much but a bit of a let down in the end. ( )