Elitist Book Reviews

I’ve often talked with my wife about how our lives have changed.  We remark on how improvements in technology have changed our day-to-day lives in such significant ways that our kids live totally different lives than we did twenty years ago.  Having those types of discussions has led me to wonder what a person who was born one hundred or one hundred and fifty years ago would think about us today.  Would they even recognize what we do as a normal life?  Would they understand most of what is going on around them?  How would they deal with or understand things like computers, the internet, ipods, phones, or video games just to name a few?

Why do I bring this up, you ask?  Because reading THE FRACTAL PRINCE by Hannu Rajaniemi made me feel like that person from the mid 1800’s coming to today.  I felt like someone who had been thrust into a world that I didn’t and almost couldn’t understand.  And I say that not as a bad thing.  I’m not gonna lie to you, this book was a tough read, especially at first.  Terms are thrown around and I had to make sense of them myself until the context of it gave me foundation for what the terms meant.  Still, I eventually figured this world out and it was a world full of wonders and problems.

I’ve tried writing down a synopsis of what this book is about several times.  And as much as I read it and think I understood THE FRACTAL PRINCE, I’m having a heck of a time trying to sum it up in only a few paragraphs.  The terms in the book that got in my way at first make it hard to tell you about some of the concepts.  You don’t know what those terms mean or why they should matter to you.  In fact the whole novel is so centered on this technology far far in the future that I’m just gonna give up.  Instead I’ll give you the synopsis from Amazon:

“The good thing is, no one will ever die again. The bad thing is, everyone will want to.”

A physicist receives a mysterious paper. The ideas in it are far, far ahead of current thinking and quite, quite terrifying. In a city of “fast ones,” shadow players, and jinni, two sisters contemplate a revolution.

And on the edges of reality a thief, helped by a sardonic ship, is trying to break into a Schrödinger box for his patron. In the box is his freedom. Or not.

Jean de Flambeur is back. And he’s running out of time.

See what I mean? If that synopsis doesn’t help you much, don’t worry.  It didn’t help me either.  This is not an easy book to tie down with a few sentences.  And I don’t think it’s supposed to be.

In the end the problem I had writing about this book is the problem I had with the book.  It seemed so in love with the technology that it failed to tell as compelling a story as I would have liked.  I can think back on it and remember some of the events and even some of the characters, but the problem was that all of that was so overshadowed just trying to figure out and understand the novel. It makes Rajaniemi's follow-up to THE QUANTUM THIEF (which I liked well enough - check out the review here) a tough book to flat-out recommend. 

I certainly enjoyed reading it and I loved the sensation of seeing a far-future that was so utterly alien.  That sense of wonder in my opinion is the reason to read the book.  The story was secondary to it.  If you like those big ideas and that scope and imagination then I would say THE FRACTAL PRINCE (and it's predecessor) is for you.  If you want a rip roaring yarn that’s hard to put down because you just HAVE TO KNOW what’s going to happen next, then I might give it a pass.

Age Recommendation: 16+  It just seemed rather complicated
Violence: Not much that I recall
Language: A bit here and there
Sex: A weird sci-fi-type scene at the beginning, not too graphic but certainly there

Want to give these novels a shot? Here are your links:

THE QUANTUM THIEF
THE FRACTAL PRINCE

THE QUANTUM THIEF, by Hannu Rajaniemi, is a Hard SF book packed with ideas, twists and turns. It is difficult. It is confusing. I don't think I understood the whole thing. I also loved every minute of it.

To try and describe the book would leave me feeling inadequate and stupid. I just know I'll miss something, or not do it justice. So I'm going to let the back of the book describe it for you.

Jean le Flambeur gets up in the morning and has to kill himself before his other self can kill him first. Just another day in the Diemma Prison. Rescued by the mysterious Mieli and her flirtatious spacecraft, Jean is taken to the Oubliette, the Moving City of Mars, where time is a currency, memories are treasures, and a moon-turned-singularity lights the night. Meanwhile, investigator Isadore Beautrelet, called in to investigate the murder of a chocolatier, finds himself on the trail of an archcriminal, a man named le Flambeur.

Indeed, in his many lives, the entity called Jean le Flambeur has been a thief, a confidence artist, a posthuman mind-burglar, and more. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his deeds are known throughout the Heterarchy, from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of Mars. In his last exploit, he managed the supreme feat of hiding the truth about himself from the one person in the solar system hardest to hide from: himself. Now he has the chance to regain himself in all his power-in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed.

See? There was no way I was going to get close to that kind of description.

So let's get right down to it, OK? This book has some flaws. To start with, the characters are fairly two dimensional. Most of the story is following Jean around, and he's trying to crack into his old memories and find who he was. His personality changes throughout the book as bits and pieces get uncovered--some will like this, some will have a hard time becoming attached to the character. The other two main characters, Isidore and Mieli, are mostly there to help get through Jean's story--don't expect much else from them by way of personal information or growth. Perhaps the main issue that will stop a large number of people from liking the novel is just how incredibly dense the novel is. This isn't Space Opera--it may be very difficult for the new SF reader to really get into this work. The science in the book is insane and it took me a good 10-15 pages to start understanding some of the words (gogol, gevulot, etc...).

But personally, I don't care. That's not what THE QUANTUM THIEF is about in my opinion. Again, this isn't a light and fluffy SF novel. This is Hard SF. The science detailed and often hard to grasp. It is about the ideas, about a new and fascinating vision of a far future. This book is something new, different and alien and I loved it for that fact. There were several instances while reading where I shut the book and simply absorbed the ideas and concepts that the author presented. The implications of some of the technology was amazing. This book is about the ideas and about a mystery surrounding those ideas and in that the book succeeded on every level.

My heads still buzzing from reading THE QUANTUM THIEF. If you like SF novels that are heavy on the science and action, that cram insanely cool ideas down your throat every page or so, then this is certainly the book for you. I understand that's not everyone's cup of tea. As for me, I'm going to go read THE QUANTUM THIEF again.

Age Recommendation: 15+ Nothing really wrong here, just a thick read. The age rec. is kinda dependent on your ability to grasp the deep concepts.
Language: Not too much. A few words here and there.
Violence: A few action scenes but nothing with blood or gore.
Sex: An implied scene, nothing more.