jeriendhal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jeriendhal) wrote2011-01-03 04:59 am
jeriendhal) wrote2011-01-03 04:59 am
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Review: Halting State, by Charles Stross (spoilers)
Summary: In Charles ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
autopope Stross' novel set Twenty minutes (more like ten to twenty years) into the future, Constable Sue Smith, just your average happily married lesbian Edinburgh beat cop in the recently independent Republic of Scotland, gets called in to investigate a bank robbery. Nothing new there, except that the "bank" is completely virtual, set in a Warcraft-like MMO and the bank robbers were a platoon of orcs run by Pakistani gold farmers backed up by a dragon.
That's weird.
When Elaine, a forensic accountant with a love of broadswords, and Jack, a burned out games programmer whose whole life is literally online are called in by the MMO's insurance firm to investigate, things get Political very fast and the line between the games people play and the Games governments play start blurring rapidly together.
That's scary.
Review: There's something vastly appropriate about this being the first novel I read on my Kindle, a device thinner than a Star Trek PADD and only a gleam in the eye of futurists ten years ago. In Halting State's world, the police operate in CopSpace, an overlay in the real world containing information about perps and cases, updated almost in real time through their VR glasses. Meanwhile gamers use similar glasses to LARP in Discworld and an online espionage game through the streets of Edinburgh. And if it sounds like the same old warping of perceptions that we've been reading about since the New Wave back in the Sixties, well there is a lot of it there, but it's given a lovely twist by Stross, whose writing is witty and engaging, and who speaks with a firsthand knowledge of both programmers and gaming geeks. Avalon Four, the compromised MMO, is specifically an online derivative of Dungeons & Dragons, Jack has D20 manuals scattered in his apartment, and he even dives into a Call of Cthulu sim to retrieve critical information he'd had squirelled away. (Hint: Deep Ones are much easier to deal with when you're operating in Elder God Mode) And it's good that Stross knows his stuff, as he weaves a tale that rapidly dives into deeper and deeper layers of intrigue that remain plausible in the way Dan Brown completely fails to achieve.
That said, it's not entirely perfect. Sue's accent can get a trifle twee at times, and she isn't given the character development that Jack and Elaine receive. Though it is refreshing to see a police department that acts as basically overwhelmed but benevolent, not requiring a Maverick Cop That Bucks the System to try and solve the problem. Actually the whole government response to the crisis is notably calm and sensible (aside from the initial interference from the EU Men in Black) which is probably a first for a thriller novel.
Also Jack, while a nice guy, is honestly just made even more pathetic when we find out the truth about his kidnapped niece, a bit of artificial tension that is very... um... artificial, to put it mildly. I found it more annoying to interesting, especially when Stross danced around the truth to keep it a secret from the reader, even as he kept a tight second person perspective on Jack's chapters.
Overall though, it's a great a little novel. I'm going to be disappointed when the predictions within turn out to be contradicted by whatever's really going to surprise us.
autopope Stross' novel set Twenty minutes (more like ten to twenty years) into the future, Constable Sue Smith, just your average happily married lesbian Edinburgh beat cop in the recently independent Republic of Scotland, gets called in to investigate a bank robbery. Nothing new there, except that the "bank" is completely virtual, set in a Warcraft-like MMO and the bank robbers were a platoon of orcs run by Pakistani gold farmers backed up by a dragon. That's weird.
When Elaine, a forensic accountant with a love of broadswords, and Jack, a burned out games programmer whose whole life is literally online are called in by the MMO's insurance firm to investigate, things get Political very fast and the line between the games people play and the Games governments play start blurring rapidly together.
That's scary.
Review: There's something vastly appropriate about this being the first novel I read on my Kindle, a device thinner than a Star Trek PADD and only a gleam in the eye of futurists ten years ago. In Halting State's world, the police operate in CopSpace, an overlay in the real world containing information about perps and cases, updated almost in real time through their VR glasses. Meanwhile gamers use similar glasses to LARP in Discworld and an online espionage game through the streets of Edinburgh. And if it sounds like the same old warping of perceptions that we've been reading about since the New Wave back in the Sixties, well there is a lot of it there, but it's given a lovely twist by Stross, whose writing is witty and engaging, and who speaks with a firsthand knowledge of both programmers and gaming geeks. Avalon Four, the compromised MMO, is specifically an online derivative of Dungeons & Dragons, Jack has D20 manuals scattered in his apartment, and he even dives into a Call of Cthulu sim to retrieve critical information he'd had squirelled away. (Hint: Deep Ones are much easier to deal with when you're operating in Elder God Mode) And it's good that Stross knows his stuff, as he weaves a tale that rapidly dives into deeper and deeper layers of intrigue that remain plausible in the way Dan Brown completely fails to achieve.
That said, it's not entirely perfect. Sue's accent can get a trifle twee at times, and she isn't given the character development that Jack and Elaine receive. Though it is refreshing to see a police department that acts as basically overwhelmed but benevolent, not requiring a Maverick Cop That Bucks the System to try and solve the problem. Actually the whole government response to the crisis is notably calm and sensible (aside from the initial interference from the EU Men in Black) which is probably a first for a thriller novel.
Also Jack, while a nice guy, is honestly just made even more pathetic when we find out the truth about his kidnapped niece, a bit of artificial tension that is very... um... artificial, to put it mildly. I found it more annoying to interesting, especially when Stross danced around the truth to keep it a secret from the reader, even as he kept a tight second person perspective on Jack's chapters.
Overall though, it's a great a little novel. I'm going to be disappointed when the predictions within turn out to be contradicted by whatever's really going to surprise us.