The Fractal Prince [Hardcover]

Having read Quantum Thief I was really looking forward to reading this, and I got 2/3 of the way in before I started to realise this really is not the hard SF of the first book. It seems to be an attempt at merging fantasy and sci-fi in the far future (think Warhammer 40k with plot). And even when the author tries to justify the fantasy in science terms, it is really a bit contrived and I was left feeling there needed to be more explanation or left as fantasy.

Saying that, Hannu Rajaniemi does maintain his impecable story telling. The book starts with 2 distinct threads which gradually and inexorably intertwine to produce a fast passed finish, one thread being hard SF featuring out hero, Jean le Falmbeur, while the second is based on some far future earht (probably). There seem to be few inconsistencies, but as with the first book, if you are expecting any background to the world Hannu has conjured up, you will be disappointed. That said, it is worth reading The Quantum Thief first - this one would leave you even more confused and exacerbated at the lack of world development and I suspect would enhance your reading of this book.

Personal Summary: Great story but mix of SF/F does not mesh well in this, and some plots seem a little contrived.

"The Fractal Prince" picks up where its predecessor, The Quantum Thief, left off (so stop reading this now if you haven't read "Thief" and you don't want spoilers). Master criminal Jean le Flambeur (a sort of post-human Raffles) has been rescued from prison by mercenary Mieli, acting for the mysterious Pellegrini. Pursued by Hunters, he is about undertake an audacious job for his patroness.

That makes it sound as though the story is just more of the same: a murder mystery and a caper, folded with mind-bending, almost incomprehensible hard-SF technology (none of it explained even in passing) and a tangle of motivations, both human and post human. And one can enjoy it at that level, watching the strangeness unfold and admiring Rajaniemi's command of the science, the breadth of his conception, his sheer breakneck imagination. The nature of the characters, in particular, encourages this. Almost all are instances (sometimes, multiple instances) of original individuals, incarnated into more or less techologically advanced artificial "bodies" for various purposes. (Rajaniemi's far future seems to follow the same logic as, for example, Charles Stross's Saturn's Children - intelligences cannot be artificial as such, but must be developed/ grown as human though they may then be duplicated, rehosted and augmented on non-biological hardware. A fair bit of the plot is concerned with accessing such stored "souls" - "gogols" - which are then traded as a commodity). Personality blurs - both for the "humans" and the godlike Sobernost - as does reality, which fractures into a succession of virtual worlds within worlds. In the end, it's not possible to say for sure who did what. I'm not even sure the question makes sense. So it's tempting just to hang on for the ride, as it were, without trying to understand too much.

However, I think that if you focus back from the detail - look at the wood rather than the trees, perhaps - a narrative is emerging, weaving together the early history of Jean himself, the pellegrini and the fate of Earth, all bound up with the intrigues of the godlike Sobernost. The latter - the vasilievs, the chens, the pellegrinis - are one of the best done parts of the book with the rivalries and jealousies of these supposedly higher intelligences resembling nothing as much as ancient myth, where gods with awesome powers but no commensurate sense of morality, responsibility, or proportion play power games with feeble humans. ("As flies to wanton boys so we are to the gods/ They kill us for their sport").

I suspect the book will divide readers. For me, it was exhilarating. If you want something where you can grasp each bit of detail before moving to the next, you may find it frustrating.

The first book (Quantum Thief) took a while to make sense, and settle down into a style you could decipher and appreciate as new and different. Once you "got it" it became a refreshing new angle on storytelling that I like. This book carries on from the first and is already in it's stride, so instant fun. For all it's newness though there is an underlying sense of Conan Doyle about it. Every so often everything falls into place because Le Flambeur does something only he knows about and you are left wondering how that happened based on the scant information you were given. And we are not talking about red clay on a shoe here! This is not to say it is too unpredictable. I like the fact I have no idea where it is going for a change!