The Fractal Prince by Hannu RajaniemiMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Jacket Blurb: “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.
In Hannu Rajaniemi’s sparkling follow-up to the critically acclaimed international sensation The Quantum Thief, he returns to his awe-inspiring vision of the universe…and we discover what the future held for Earth
A book probably best not started at 5am in the morning, or right before bed. Absolutely fascinating concepts and world/universe setting, but some of the language and sentence structure is enough to give an un-caffeinated or sleep deprived system brain skids. I read the Husband one paragraph over breakfast and his eyes glazed over.
This one was a bit slow to start as the author bounces from point of view to point of view, much like fractals do mathematically. But then there is a point in the story where you find yourself completely sucked in and pulled along, and the stories suddenly come together in an absolutely brilliant fashion.
I loved the world building in this one, the idea of nanotechnology running amok as ‘wildcode’, of electronic jinns and the blurred line between reality and virtual reality.
With that being said, it still felt as if there were components that were incomplete, some ends not quite tied off with a nice little bow. An indication perhaps of a third book? I hope so.
Recommended if you’ve read Quantum Thief first.
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