The Quantum Thief | Review

The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


So... well, I have a really hard time with rating this book (it would come in as 2.5 stars, rather). I also didn't have an easy time reading it.

On one hand the sci-fi ideas and concepts are really, really great and also: way cool. "Passing a comemory" is something I've wanted to do at least a million times... The whole world the book takes place in with its mixture of the tangible with the abstract is really amazing and opens a million possibilities which would be so fun (and frightening...) to explore. So world that is built is great, amazing, really, really intriguing. It's the way of world-building I have a problem with, because...

On the other hand I really, really disliked the writing style of the book. It may be one of the principles of hard SF to write a lot of combat and fight scenes into the novel (which is in any case something that I could do without), but I thought the writing as a whole was really ... ugly. I can't really pinpoint it to specific things that I disliked. But the writing style really did make me not want to read the book, and it - of course - became especially clear during those fight scenes, when I was really questioning why I read it in the first place. (And yes, I have read good written - imo - scenes of that kind, too.
My dislike may be due to my general dislike of show-over-tell. I just think it's a stupid concept. For me to like a book it always needs a clear predomination of descriptive parts, I simply don't like reading the show parts. (And again, yes, sometimes some parts where the show outweighs the tell can be good and necessary to a book, and I've read good examples of that, too.)
What I also disliked was the main character. This might also be related to the decision to make his parts a first person narrator. I get that he's supposed to be this bragging kind of master thief, but his first person voice does not seem consistent nor personal in any way. The characters could have been a super interesting part of this book and kind of story (and they probably should have been, as with a classic heist plot you'd need something to set you apart from a million similar stories), but they weren't. There were moments when you got a glimpse of an idea of who these characters are, but those were fleeting and didn't add up. (And again, I love the mysterious, I love hints and I love an author who leaves space for a reader's imagination, this was not what it was like here, though.)
I realize this is the first part of a trilogy and maybe the weaker points of this book will be worked on/filled in in the next parts of the series, but honestly at this point I'm so disinterested that I just don't care.

I also might have a problem with the sheer abundance of ideas being packed into a relatively short novel (yes, I probably would not have even finished it, when it had more pages, as it is) combined with a confusing heist plot. With this huge newly created world it would have made for a huge book, a real tombstone, as well. (Think "Game of Thrones", "Harry Potter" or anything Ken Follet, what have you...)
Also, maybe, if the world building takes up so much of the reader's attention, it is not the best move to complicate things even further by mixing many different plot and time lines within a chapter all the time.

So, to sum up: SF concepts parts: wonderfully done. Writing style: Couldn't be worse for the kind of reader I am. I'll just be hoping that they will one day make some wonderful movies out of this book and the trilogy and I'll go watch these.

PS: Yes, many of my points of displeasure may be due to the genre, maybe I just don't like what is called "hard SF". But in that case I can only say that it is such a pity that this book belongs to the genre and it would have such amazing potential in a different genre. ;)



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