The Fractal Prince

October 22, 2012
Rajaniemi’s fun if sometimes torturously convoluted follow-up to 2011’s The Quantum Thief returns to the adventures of Jean le Flambeur, posthuman master thief, still unable to remember much of his past and now forced to work for space captain Mieli and her goddess/debtor Joséphine Pellegrini. On Earth, meanwhile, Tawaddud Gomelez schemes to advance her powerful father’s political fortunes and put behind her a blemished past that includes a dalliance with a jinni. Rajaniemi plays with Arabian Nights references, from a character named Dunyazad, after Scheherazade’s sister, to multilayered storytelling, but these elements never quite work alongside the hard postsingularity SF of Jean’s story. The plot can get muddled as a result, but Rajaniemi’s witty language (“On the day the Hunter comes for me, I am killing ghost cats from the Schrödinger Box”) and charmingly wry hero will make the read well worth the effort for the first installment’s fans. Agent: John Jarrold, John Jarrold Literary Agency.

November 1, 2012
Intimidating sequel to The Quantum Thief (2011), Rajaniemi's spectacular, paranoid-conspiracy, hard sci-fi whodunit debut. Thief extraordinaire Jean le Flambeur owes his continued existence to the Oortian warrior Mieli, her intelligent spaceship Perhonen, and her mysterious patron, the pellegrini. To pay the debt, he must execute another impossible heist: to loot the mind of a member of the Sobornost, the upload collective that rules Earth and whose ultimate goal is total control of reality itself. His target is Matjek Chen, the oldest of the Sobornost "chens," or avatars. On Earth, meanwhile, the Lady Tawaddud of House Gomelez, rulers of the Sirr, a city built out of the Shard, the habitable fragments of a vast crashed Sobornost spaceship, must solve a murder that threatens the ruling council. She will need help from Sumanguru, a sort of detective Sobornost avatar who, like all his kind, is vulnerable to the wildcode which swarms in from the desert. Tawaddud's father, Cassar, has selected a husband for her, but she trusts him even less than her sister Dunyazad, who seems less interested in solving the murder than keeping Tawaddud in her place. Above it all, seemingly, the Sobornost conduct their Great Game against the mysterious zoku, who manifest as magnificent jewels and have solved problems the Sobornost are unable to. This is all set forth within complex, intricately structured stories-within-stories, neologisms that yield meaning only after many repetitions and changes of context, and never a word of explication to smooth the way. Formidably challenging, with few of the thrills and spills that made the predecessor volume such a delight--would that Rajaniemi had kept at least some of his vast intellectual capacity tucked out of sight--but, mostly, rewarding. Something like Ted Chiang meets John C. Wright, moderated by Stephen Hawking.

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Starred review from October 15, 2012

When Mieli, the winged Hunter and servant of a goddess, encounters quantum thief Jean de Flambeur for the second time, the thief is in the process of experimenting with Schrodinger's box for his current patron. Together the pair must travel to Earth on a mission intimately involved in the planet's future. At the same time, two sisters in the haunted city of Sirr, one of the last cities on a broken Earth, plan a revolution to free their city from the might of the Sobornost's virtual control of the solar system. Rajaniemi's sequel to The Quantum Thief blends the action-based story of de Flambeur, Mieli, and the sarcastic, sentient ship Perbonen with the slower-paced story arc of sisters Tawaddud and Dunyazad as they work and plot for social change and freedom. VERDICT Stories within stories, mind-boggling scientific extrapolations, and flamboyant characters mark the author as a rising star of the genre.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2012
If, after beginning this sequel to The Quantum Thief (2011), you find yourself wondering what the heck is going on here, don't panic: Jean de Flambeur, the novel's centerpiece, is wondering the same thing. Sprung (in the first novel) from a virtual prison by Mieli, a powerful woman who offers Jean his freedom in exchange for a service, he must return to his thieving ways and steal something for the pellegrini, a sort of godlike entity. But, even now, Jean still doesn't know exactly why he was busted out of prison, or what, precisely, he's stolen. He does know that, until he can pay off his debt to Mieli, he won't be able to recover his lost memories. To repay his debt, he must safecrack a Schrdinger box and release the god that might or might not be trapped inside. Fans of the author's popular debut novel, which mixed hard science with wild fantasy, will probably be lining up for this follow-up, which resolves some of the questions posed in The Quantum Thief but, on the other hand, asks several more, for which there are, as yet, no answers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)