A really pleasant surprise

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	• Halting State (Ace Science Fiction) Charles Stross Ace, 2008 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 54 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Simply awesome

best book about the coming future and what physical and digital systems will look like and how we will interact with them
Read this book!!

Halting Read

Way back when I was in seminary school, there was a person there who said you could never write a narrative in the second person. I wonder if someone rapped Charles Stross's knuckles then too. This novel is stubbornly written entirely in the second person--the first novel I have ever read written that way. Perhaps it was to imitate the vernacular of video games ("you have picked up a level 7 blunderbuss...") to give the reader a closer connection to the characters. At first it was extremely irritating, often requiring me as a reader to do some subliminal translating before proceeding. However, by the time I had reached the climax of the plot, I agreed that this story could not have been written any other way. It left me with an eagerness to pick up the book again and read it over on some later date.

There has been a few negative reviews of this book--mostly that it starts off at a strong pace, but fizzles at the end. I strongly disagree with that assessment. The denouement was more extended than most modern science fiction, but not nearly as winded as Stross's obvious role-model Gibson has been of late. This is a very well-paced story, with intriguing themes and endearing characters. It managed to do something to me that only David Brin has been capable of: make me wonder what the characters are up to when the book is closed.

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A really pleasant surprise

I encountered to this book in the course of an hour-long hunt through cross-references ("people who bought this book also bought..."), best-seller lists, etc. looking for something new and good in the vein of William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, etc. - a work by an author who really gets how the present works and the near future is likely to work, and can be truly, literarily creative with it. I ordered it expecting something decent, and found that I had received a real gem. Not only is the tech background super-solid (it helps if you're a sysadmin, but if not, no worries), but the writing is great - the dialog and internal monologues are as sardonic and humorous as, say, Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaason, or John Sandford. Finally, dear God, it's set in Scotland and reads like Ian Rankin tartan noir. What's not to like?

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reviews: 1, page 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

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