Hannu Rajaniemi, who writes SFF stories in both English and
his native Finnish, first came to my attention as a result of an interview with
him in Interzone 255, of which I
noted: "[he is] author of the Jean
de Flambeur trilogy: The Quantum Thief,
The Fractal Prince and The Causal Angel. I'd not heard of this
author before but the stories, set in a post-singularity universe, sound like
an intriguing mixture of space opera, people with god-like powers, and virtual
reality."
I was sufficiently intrigued to order the first of the
trilogy, and have just finished reading it. It's hard to know where to begin in
commenting on TQT, because it is
highly original. We first meet Jean de Flambeur in a strange prison with
transparent walls, created by the Archons. He has lost his memory, and when he
is sprung from jail to steal a specific item, he has to travel to the
Oubliette, a moving city on Mars, where he left his memories hidden away. Most
of the story is told in the first person by de Flambeur, but there is a
secondary plot thread featuring a different character, a student and part-time
detective called Isidore Beautrelet, who is investigating crime in the
Oubliette.
I am reminded to some extent of Gibson's Neuromancer, which I reviewed on this
blog in March 2010, in that the comment I made about that novel applies at
least as much to this one:
If I have any
criticism it is that the plot is so densely packed, the writing so laconic,
that you really have to stay on your mental toes to keep up with everything
that's going on. This is not a book to fill an idle moment, you need to settle
down and concentrate. In fact, I was tempted to read it again immediately, in
order to savour it in a more leisurely fashion and pick up on the nuances that
I suspect slipped by me the first time.
TQT is packed
full of ideas and concepts, to the extent that I doubt that even reading it
twice in quick succession would be enough for me to understand everything going
on in every scene; it would probably take three readings and even then I'm not
confident that would suffice. Comprehension is not helped by a couple of other
characteristics of the writing: most importantly, the author has obviously
taken to heart the "show don't tell" mantra, and there are many terms
which are introduced without explanation, leaving the reader to try to figure
out what they mean from the paucity of clues scattered through the story. Most
obviously, there are two opposed groups sharing the Solar System with normal
humans, both masters of very high technology; the Sobornost and the zoku. Who
they are, and how and why they differ from the rest of humanity (the zoku at
least appear to be physically human), is never made clear. I should add that
"normal humans" is very much a relative term – the inhabitants of the
Oubliette only have a limited time as humans before they have to spend a period
as "the Quiet", which seems to involve their personalities being
transferred to the biomachines responsible for manual labour. The other issue
is that some of the scenes are set in the past rather than the present without
this being clearly signalled; something else to keep readers on their toes.
One problem with all this is what I might call
"conceptual overload"; I was struggling so much to comprehend the
basic situation that I tended to lose track of the characters and the plot. In
terms of ease of comprehension this is the exact opposite of (for example) a
typical detective novel, in which the reader is familiar with the background –
the country, the society, the police force, the general process taking place (and
even the principal characters if it's one of a series) – and can therefore
focus entirely on the plot and the personalities. In TQT, nothing is familiar!
This may all sound like a terrible mess but in fact I found
it fascinating, and read this 330-page story in three intensive sessions. I have
already sent off for the next two volumes, and on the basis of this one expect
to retain the trilogy for further readings.
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