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Halting State by Charles Stross
Dec. 8th, 2015 10:53 pmThe Blurb On The Back:
No cheats, no back doors, no extra lives.
It was called in as a robbery at Hayek Associates, an online game company. So you can imagine Sergeant Sue Smith’s mood as she watches footage of the heist being carried out by a band of orcs and a dragon, and realises that the robbery from an online game company is actually a robbery from an online game.
Just wonderful. Like she has nothing better to do. But when the bodies of actual people start to show up, it’s clear that there is something very dangerous and very real going on at Hayek Associates.
If this is a game, someone is playing for keeps.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Charlie Stross’s cyber thriller (first published in 2008) has great ideas and makes interesting use of the second person point of view. However, the story becomes overly convoluted at times with the introduction of new players while the plot frequently becomes bogged down with technical info dumps that I had trouble following (although to be fair, Stross says in an interview at the end that he’s writing for an audience that has a certain level of technical expertise). Of the three main narrators I particularly liked the pragmatic Sue who’s aware of the politics going on above her pay grade but is more concerned with keeping her head down and just doing the job and worrying about her son. In comparison I found Elaine and Jack to be less well developed and their development is, unfortunately, more predictable (notwithstanding a couple of plot twists that I thought were well handled). There’s a lot of politics in the novel and it’s interesting to see the predictions that Stross makes for the (then) future – some of which are on the verge of coming true (such as driverless cars), some of which could still conceivably happen (e.g. quantum computers) and others are more open to question. Where the book did fall down for me though was in the technical info dumps, particularly when it comes to explaining how on-line computing and other systems work, which mostly went over my head and therefore slowed down the action. That said though, there while this book wasn’t really for me, I would definitely read more of Stross’s work.
It was called in as a robbery at Hayek Associates, an online game company. So you can imagine Sergeant Sue Smith’s mood as she watches footage of the heist being carried out by a band of orcs and a dragon, and realises that the robbery from an online game company is actually a robbery from an online game.
Just wonderful. Like she has nothing better to do. But when the bodies of actual people start to show up, it’s clear that there is something very dangerous and very real going on at Hayek Associates.
If this is a game, someone is playing for keeps.
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Charlie Stross’s cyber thriller (first published in 2008) has great ideas and makes interesting use of the second person point of view. However, the story becomes overly convoluted at times with the introduction of new players while the plot frequently becomes bogged down with technical info dumps that I had trouble following (although to be fair, Stross says in an interview at the end that he’s writing for an audience that has a certain level of technical expertise). Of the three main narrators I particularly liked the pragmatic Sue who’s aware of the politics going on above her pay grade but is more concerned with keeping her head down and just doing the job and worrying about her son. In comparison I found Elaine and Jack to be less well developed and their development is, unfortunately, more predictable (notwithstanding a couple of plot twists that I thought were well handled). There’s a lot of politics in the novel and it’s interesting to see the predictions that Stross makes for the (then) future – some of which are on the verge of coming true (such as driverless cars), some of which could still conceivably happen (e.g. quantum computers) and others are more open to question. Where the book did fall down for me though was in the technical info dumps, particularly when it comes to explaining how on-line computing and other systems work, which mostly went over my head and therefore slowed down the action. That said though, there while this book wasn’t really for me, I would definitely read more of Stross’s work.
