I finished Charles Stross’ most recent novel, Halting State, last night. This is the third Stross book I’ve read in a row, and this novel reinforces my admiration for his writing.
Halting State takes place in the very near future – about the year 2025 in a newly-independent Scotland. It’s a policing/detective novel of sorts, with an introductory whodunit that the main characters try to solve as the novel progresses. The scene of the crime? A massive MMORPG run by a shadowy gaming firm based in Edinburgh. Someone has hacked into the game and stolen a truckload of virtual-reality goods that can be sold for real cash on eBay.
Of course with Stross, this is just the beginning of a massive web of intersections and extrapolations. I won’t give too much away here.
After having read this novel, I continue to see two general weaknesses in Stross:
- His characterization is often fairly flat.
- His endings are rushed and/or tangential.
Stross tries hard to flesh out his protagonists – Jack Reed and Elaine Barnaby – but he’s no Pynchon. There’s one particular backstory with Reed that in particular is supposed to get us to see deeper into Reed’s motivations, but I felt it was almost tacked on as an afterthought. And the denouement is really a birds’ nest of intertwining threads that he tries – and almost succeeds – in wrapping up neatly. Almost.
So – enough with the criticisms. I actually loved Halting State. I would recommend it to any sci-fi fan. It’s not quite the book that Accelerando is, but that’s saying a lot. Accelerando is up there in my “book of the year” lists.
One final nitpick: I started reading this novel with the hopes that Stross would explore the term “halting state” as used near the end of Accelerando – that is, a mental or cognitive block that affects wetware. This novel didn’t really get into AI much at all, so I was left wanting.
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