Teaser

Jean le Flambeur is a thief, perhaps the greatest thief there’s ever been, which is why he’s so eager to escape from prison. Even if freedom means taking on a job with higher stake than usual . . .

Review

The Quantum Thief has quite a strong reputation. You just have to look at all the big names on the blurb and all the award nominations for proof of that. Not bad going for a debut. All of this praise means I came to Rajaniemi’s work with a lot of expectations. Expectations that were perhaps too much to expect of a debut novel. I expected a heist novel with space opera flair and a dash of hard SF to help things along. I got something rather different, even if I’m not entirely sure what that actually was just yet.

I have to confess that I didn’t entirely understand this book. It’s not quite the existential headscratcher that Blindsight turned out to be, but I found Rajaniemi playing the same area of the SF sandbox as Peter Watts. The Quantum Prince is all about the unreliability of self. Questions hang over the identity of, well, just about everyone. Are these people even human anymore? Or have body modifications, computer avatars, split personalities, and uploaded consciousnesses turned our species into something else. Like Watts, Rajaniemi isn’t interested in stopping to explain his crazy (and often brilliant) ideas. He just sprinkles them throughout the book and expects you to be able to put the pieces together. Honestly, the books I’ve been reading this month have left me wondering maybe – just maybe – I’m actually a little bit thick. In fact, I’m pretty sure I am.

The ideas that I did vaguely comprehend range from the strange to the incredible. At the incredible end, we have the idea of a culture where time is literally money. I love the word milleniaire, if nothing else. And the whole notion of pirates stealing uploaded human psyches to get at the information in their memories is just brilliant. At the other end of the spectrum, I’m utterly nonplussed by the twenty-first century gamer guys creating a future paradise. Especially when it’s all an excuse for a weird sex party. It’s all a bit too William Gibson for me. Cyberpunk has had its day, and the sooner we’re rid of it, the better.

I won’t say I didn’t enjoy this book, because on the rare instances that I was able to follow what was going on, I had a good time with the adventurous thiefiness of it all. The problem is that there’s just too much going on here. Too many ideas stuffed into too few pages. I don’t think making the book longer would have helped (I chose to read it now partly because it looked like a nice quick read) but I think it could have had an idea, or even a set-piece or two taken out without losing anything vital. There are probably several good, quality novels lurking in here, but they’ve been squished into something so overburdened with ideas that my final reaction is less ‘wow’ and more akin to a shrug.

This is the first book in a trilogy, and though I’m not ruling it out altogether, I won’t be in any great hurry to read the further adventures of Jean le Flambeur.

Book Stats

• Jean le Flambeur (#1)
• First Published 2010
• 330 Pages