Hannu Rajaniemi

Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy - from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to steal their thoughts, to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of the Moving Cities of Mars. Except that Jean made one mistake. Now he is condemned to play endless variations of a game-theoretic riddle in the vast virtual jail of the Axelrod Archons - the Dilemma Prison - against countless copies of himself. Jean's routine of death, defection and cooperation is upset by the arrival of Mieli and her spidership, Perhonen. She offers him a chance to win back his freedom and the powers of his old self - in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed . . . The Quantum Thief is a dazzling hard SF novel set in the solar system of the far future - a heist novel peopled by bizarre post-humans but powered by very human motives of betrayal, revenge and jealousy. It is a stunning debut.

The Quantum Thief

The Quantum Thief is a Kirkus Reviews Best of 2011 Science Fiction & Fantasy title. One of Library Journal's Best SF/Fantasy Books of 2011 Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist, and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy- from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of Mars. Now he's confined inside the Dilemma Prison, where every day he has to get up and kill himself before his other self can kill him. Rescued by the mysterious Mieli and her flirtatious spacecraft, Jean is taken to the Oubliette, the Moving City of Mars, where time is currency, memories are treasures, and a moon-turnedsingularity lights the night. What Mieli offers is the chance to win back his freedom and the powers of his old self-in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed. As Jean undertakes a series of capers on behalf of Mieli and her mysterious masters, elsewhere in the Oubliette investigator Isidore Beautrelet is called in to investigate the murder of a chocolatier, and finds himself on the trail of an arch-criminal, a man named le Flambeur.... Hannu Rajaniemi's The Quantum Thief is a crazy joyride through the solar system several centuries hence, a world of marching cities, ubiquitous public-key encryption, people communicating by sharing memories, and a race of hyper-advanced humans who originated as MMORPG guild members. But for all its wonders, it is also a story powered by very human motives of betrayal, revenge, and jealousy. It is a stunning debut. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Janice Hopper

I hated this book for the first few chapters. I had no idea what was going on. There were tons of terms that weren't defined, and characters who appeared with almost no introduction.

BUT... there are wikis and other sources of information Out There In The Internet. I availed myself of some of them. I kept going. I didn't let myself be put off when I didn't quite understand what was happening.

And I grew to like it quite a lot. It's an amazing and imaginative creation. Martian walking cities; guilds that derived from ancient Earth MMORGs. Nanotech and virtual reality stuff EVERYWHERE. Wow.

I'm sure this book reward re-reads. I'm old, so I may not have time to do that, especially when there is some much I haven't read even ONE time. It'll be interesting to see what the book club folks think of this too.

The Quantum Thief is a dazzling hard SF novel set in the solar system of the far future - a heist novel peopled by bizarre post-humans but powered by very human motives of betrayal, revenge and jealousy. It is a stunning debut. Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy - from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to steal their thoughts, to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of the Moving Cities of Mars. Except that Jean made one mistake. Now he is condemned to play endless variations of a game-theoretic riddle in the vast virtual jail of the Axelrod Archons - the Dilemma Prison - against countless copies of himself. Jean's routine of death, defection and cooperation is upset by the arrival of Mieli and her spidership, Perhonen. She offers him a chance to win back his freedom and the powers of his old self - in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed . . .

Elle Geoghegan 

Mundy Otto Reimer

I've honestly put off reading this book for around 6 years because I thought it would be full of sci-fi nonsense, with technical terms thrown in haphazardly with no actual meaning that it might as well be akin to magic. Fortunately, I was finally in a what-the-heck mood and I can say that I was more than glad to have given this book a chance and be proven wrong...although I do think it also helped to find out that the author Hannu Rajaniemi (who has a cool badass-sounding name by the way) lives near me and that he's formally trained with a PhD in Mathematical Physics! 

Anyways, one of the main reasons why I and many others read sci-fi books is because they often offer mind-bending thought experiments of *what could be*, allowing us readers to compare and contrast that hypothetical reality to what we have now. As Asimov said, "Science fiction is important because it fights the natural notion that there's something permanent about the things the way they are right now". What parts of our humanity might change as opposed to what parts compose our non-changing core essence? 

The Quantum Thief is chock full of those concepts that challenge what we think is normal and permanent. And Rajaniemi does not sprinkle in these concepts lightly! He firehoses you with them. Take the Dilemma Prison for example, where your mind is trapped in a simulation playing Game Theory against multiple infinite copies of yourself over and over, and where the prison itself ravenously desires to expand and tile the universe in perfect game-theoretic harmony.

Or the rampant Gogol Piracy in which people who possess unique and specialized minds (ex - chocolatiers) are so highly valued that they are susceptible to thieves stealing their mind, digitally uploading it, stripping it down to its bare essentials to perform its unique function, and making and illegally distributing copies of it to be used in various tools and machinery. These gogols are able to provide the extra computational power of a miniature (and sadly often sentient!) mind that you can throw them around willy-nilly for whatever you want help with, like in cracking cryptographic locks or embedding into a bullet to give it homing capacities. 

Or take the concept of Gevulot, where every memory, experience, or thought you have is associated cryptography-style with public and private keys such that there exists layers of public-facing exomemory embedded in the surrounding molecular architecture like some memory palace taken literally. This technology then allows you to share co-memories with other people with an automatic and unique contract limiting how long and how high-definition/fuzzy they can remember that co-memory. This results in a Victorian-esque culture of privacy with extreme manners and decorum associated with every little act of you sharing something about yourself with others. It's also interesting to notice the nuanced cultural shifts caused by communicating via *co-remembering* that memory as if it was your own, rather than the *harsher* method we are familiar with of externally communicating something from *your* perspective to *my* perspective as found in our primitive methods of talk and text.

And that's not to mention the myriad of other more mundane sci-fi concepts found in this book such as terraforming planets, an immortal culture where uploading minds into body sleeves is the norm and currency is measures in units of time spent in a human body vs enslaved in a machine, optogenetic viruses that hack into your brain via patterns of lights, gangs of copy-clans composed of multiple copies of the same individual in conflict with other copy-clans (and sometimes in conflict with themselves!), etc. 

All of this is tied up into a heist-themed thriller centering around this thief who is trying to steal back parts of his former personality that for some reason his former more complete self has split apart and hidden away from himself(s). A character written very much in the vein of a (modern-day) Sherlock Holmes / House / trickster-god hybrid in personality, wit, and charm (which I admit, some readers might find his cheekiness annoyingly tiresome, but I find rather endearing). 

There's another point I should also mention. Like most sci-fi books, this may sound like it's full of neat philosophical concepts, and it definitely is...but it's just that. It's mainly a traditional adventure story packed with interesting cerebral concepts, rather than an emotionally-resonating piece of philosophy regarding some aspect of the human condition, like one of Ted Chiang's short stories for example. If you're looking for the soul-enriching experience often associated with the latter, I'm sorry to say you'll be disappointed. But if you are looking for a nice fun adventure that happens to be packed with fascinating insight-porn that you can extrapolate and mull over the implications of on your own time, then by all means this book offers a lot of material to world-build with. 

And lastly, I think this needs mentioning, especially to the newer sci-fi readers who aren't familiar with the sub-genres that exist in this field. This novel is firmly entrenched in the realm of *Hard Sci-Fi* (almost like Blindsight by Peter Watts), where it throws you off the deep end of technical jargon that you either have the background to understand and appreciate how creatively it is used, or you lack this background and have to either constantly look up stuff or just glaze over as another form of magic. I find it fortunate that I possess the former, but for those that don't, I'd highly encourage you to embrace the suspension of belief and not jump to the conclusion that this writer is just trying to pull the wool over you. Besides looking up stuff, some other reviewers mention giving it a second read which might help. 

In summary, this was a fascinating book and a rather fun story :) The reveals at the end are quite savory and Rajaniemi does a fine job of supplying you with awesome world-building tidbits to think about. Plus, The-Engineer-of-Souls is EXACTLY the job and *Being* that I've always dreamed of becoming and I absolutely love how that character was introduced ❤️

Thanks!

Sarah Escorsa

Why it is ever so slightly discombobulating that I slightly liked this book (a little):


① I was suffering from one of the deadliest, most lethal cases of severe book slump-itis ever when I picked it up.

② The story is confusing as fish (← this might or might not be the understatement of the millenium, just so you know). Every single page is packed with dumbfounding neologisms, mistyfying concepts, cryptic as shrimp lingo and somewhat baffling terminology. I had no bloody shrimping idea what the fish was going on as I was reading, as the following selfie will attest to:



To say that this book made me feel like a complete, utter, absolute, total dimwit on a particularly braindead day would be putting it midly indeed. And this is coming from someone who survived read The Dragon Never Sleeps twice—and has the badge to prove it (view spoiler)[
  

  

  
 (hide spoiler)]—which should tell you something.

③ The story sort of reminded me of Perdido Street Station at times, which, you'll have to admit, is pretty terrifying indeed.

 

Quite.

(I wasn't sure where those Mieville vibes came from until I read Carol's review and experienced a most uncommon enlightening light-bulb moment.) 

④ As you might have brilliantly deduced after reading ②, this is heavy-duty stuff and not your decaf, diet, gluten-free, non-GMO type of Sci-Fi 👋👋 waves at the Wayfarers bunch 👋👋. Given the unfathomable depth of the book slump I was in when I started the book, you would have thought a lighter read might have been slightly more appropriate, and that going for this somewhat bewildering complex tale instead would result in a debacle of epic proportions to end all debacles of epic proportions.

So quite logically, ① + ② + ③ + ④ should have = 💀💀💀, right? Well, quite logically (albeit in a moderately illogical way), it bloody shrimping didn't. And why didn't it, you ask? Because both the story and the world it is set in are creative as fish. Because the characters are weirdly engaging and engagingly weird (not to mention Super Extra Original—SEO™—with complexity on top). Because the plot is strangely intriguing and intriguingly strange (not to mention Super Extra Refreshing—SER™—and like nothing I've read before. Not in the entirety of my entire life, anyway). And also because I said so reasons. 

This most definitely calls for a celebratory dance, methinks.

 

➽ Nefarious Last Words (NLW™): this book is typically the kind of story that I DNF faster than it takes to say "unleash the crustaceans!" And yet this book survived being read by me during The Book Slump of Doom and Oblivion (TBSoDaO™). Which seems to imply that this book is Slightly Very Good (SVG™) indeed. Need I say more? Didn't think so (view spoiler)[😬 (hide spoiler)].

· Book 2: The Fractal Prince • to be read.



[Pre-review nonsense]

To say I was slightly a little confused while reading this book would be putting it quite very mildly indeed. 



More or less, yes.

Also, before tackling this story, I was down with acute book slump-itis. 

And yet, I rated this befuddling as fish tale the book 4 bloody shrimping stars. That should tell you something right there. Yes, it should.

➽ Review to come and stuff.

Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist, and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy-- from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of Mars. Now he's confined inside the Dilemma Prison, where every day he has to get up and kill himself before his other self can kill him. Rescued by the mysterious Mieli and her flirtatious spacecraft, Jean is taken to the Oubliette, the Moving City of Mars, where time is currency, memories are treasures, and a moon-turnedsingularity lights the night. What Mieli offers is the chance to win back his freedom and the powers of his old self--in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed. As Jean undertakes a series of capers on behalf of Mieli and her mysterious masters, elsewhere in the Oubliette investigator Isidore Beautrelet is called in to investigate the murder of a chocolatier, and finds himself on the trail of an arch-criminal, a man named le Flambeur.... The Quantum Thief is a crazy joyride through the solar system several centuries hence, a world of marching cities, ubiquitous public-key encryption, people communicating by sharing memories, and a race of hyper-advanced humans who originated as MMORPG guild members. But for all its wonders, it is also a story powered by very human motives of betrayal, revenge, and jealousy. It is a stunning debut. The Quantum Thief is a Kirkus Reviews Best of 2011 Science Fiction & Fantasy title. One of Library Journal's Best SF/Fantasy Books of 2011

Renee Delcourt

Watch my review on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9K5_q...

This book took me quite a while to get into. Not because it was slow moving or because I didn't like it, but because the language and flow takes a while to get used to. For the first three chapters I was constantly having to reread things trying to fully understand what was going on.

This book is totally different from any other Scifi book I've read and definitely on the more challenging side for reads. The book is full of computer technology that has yet to be explored and some pretty cool technology from some of our favorite books and movies. All the characters interlace in some interesting and entertaining ways that make for good reading. I honestly thought I had this book figured out by page 160, apparently I was joking because I couldn't have been more far off. This book completely blew my mind and I totally would suggest this to anyone who doesn't mind a more challenging read and needs something new in their reading list.

Truly I can't wait for The Fractal Prince, the second book. 


DISClOSURE: I received the book for free through Goodreads First Read.

Jales

that was a hit!!! it got me really intrigued. 

the ending i'd add more 40 pages max tho. but tbh it was so fun i didn't mind as much. 

4.5

Ben Nathan

Smart premise, interesting world, good characters. That says, it was so bogged down in technobabble that I could not enjoy it at all until the last 1/4 or so. If it hadn't been audio, I would have dropped it, but overall decent.

Halsted Mencotti Bernard

My first attempt at reading The Quantum Thief was during my last year of grad school. I barely made it through the first few chapters because it required more deciphering than I had energy for at that time. I vowed to pick it up again once I had my brainmeats back, and was not disappointed.

Perhaps my favourite part of the experience of reading this book was the lack of exposition used to get me emotionally invested. That said, I was constantly aware I was reading as I was reading. This isn't entirely a bad thing, but readers who prefer straight-up escapism and losing themselves for hours in a setting they can seamlessly slip into -- this isn't that story. There is work to be done here, and I think the payoff is worth it.

I am definitely looking forward to the rest of this trilogy, and would recommend it to anyone enjoying a bit of a jaunty heist with their hard SF.

Alex Deee

Wowza. Throughout the first half I kept wondering if I was going to finish the book -- so many weird concepts, so little explanation. And then suddenly the second half became gripping and I raced through to the end. Hannu's unwillingness to explain things is definitely a challenge, right through the epilogue, but in the end worthwhile because I can't get the book out of my head.

Matthew Xu

Don't let the 3.8 Goodreads aggregate score fool you - this is a well-written, fast-paced heist novel wrapped in a surprisingly prescient sci-fi world. There's definitely a barrier to entry in the complex, technical language of that world, but Rajaniemi balances the hard sci-fi aesthetic with a vivid writing style and clear plot direction. With a bit of patience (and trust that important concepts will get explained), I think The Quantum Thief is a perfect example of the mind-bending, forward-looking experience that SFF can deliver.

Strengths:

Exposition: Exposition and in-world descriptions are handled really efficiently: there's a general bias towards mystery and the reader filling in the blanks (especially with some of the quantum mechanical ideas), but Rajaniemi also peppers in plenty of clear, succinct definitions at strategic points throughout the book. More importantly, there is almost no truly "original" jargon in the book - terms are drawn from either mash-ups of modern scientific concepts or a diverse pool of Russian/Finnish/Japanese/French sociopolitical ideas. I especially liked that latter category of worldbuilding, which Rajaniemi uses to flex his own multilingual abilities and sneak in some pretty great foreshadowing.

Characters: For characters that are exceptionally removed from a relatable human experience, I found the entire cast to be extremely likeable and interesting. It definitely helps that macro level motivations are set up cleanly from the first pages of the book, but moment-to-moment character sensations/emotions were also written in a way that really clicked with me. It's hard to describe without copy-pasting passages, but there's liberal use of metaphor and simile - wrapped in an overall economy of language - that makes otherwise alien scenes come to life. Between Jean, Mieli, and Isidore, there wasn't a point-of-view character that I didn't enjoy spending time with, and somehow each of them has a rich, fulfilling character arc over the course of the relatively short book. I won't say more for fear of spoilers, but I am amazed that a sci-fi writer was able to fit this much organic, empathetic development amidst all the other insanity in the book.

World: While the broader world of the novel is embroiled in some spooky techno-tribalism, this book almost exclusively takes place on a walking Martian city which is easily one of my favorite fiction settings (ever?). That city, the Oubliette, plays many roles in this book: it's a shifting, funhouse-mirror-Paris that provides a narrative backdrop; it's a political system that applies a socialist lens to a reincarnating, ouroboros version of immortality; it's a technological exploration of a society that applies blockchain to every facet of their lived experience. Depending on who you are, any one of those things might be headache-inducing, but the Oubliette is also, at its core, a really cool place for a heist to happen. There are clear rules in place, a great sense of setting and aesthetics, and enough relatability to modern times to feel possible. 

Pacing: This book is only 400 pages? Chapter lengths vary, and there are a number of interludes scattered throughout, but this book manages to pack in an incredible amount of action and plot without sacrificing quieter, introspective moments. There's a good mix of internal and external conflict (granted, the internal conflict might be cheating a little when characters are literally fighting with their minds), and despite the overarching mysteries that span the book, I had a clear sense of Things Happening on nearly every page. 

Weaknesses:
Really hard for me to conjure anything up from here. Aside from the initial worldbuilding barrier (which, again, I think Rajaniemi addresses more successfully than he gets credit for), this book had almost no low points for me. There are some salient critiques concerning misogyny, particularly from Jean's character (who is down horrifically bad), but I think Rajaniemi lampshades this a bit by setting up some emasculating strike-outs and generally playing that character trait for laughs at Jean's expense. In a way, that felt to me like a broader recognition of this gentleman thief trope and the way that those conceptions of gender and masculinity have grown outdated (Isidore's general relationship incompetence is also a neat foil for Jean). 

All in all, great book.

Reader Rabbit

Spaceghost 

Michael Cowell

Chris Wilcox

Stefan Kuznetsov

Alex 

Josh Warner

Hernando

Matthew Royal

Corey Olsen

Natalie

Broken free from a nightmarish distant-future prison by a mysterious woman who offers him his life back if he will complete the ultimate heist he left unfinished, con man Jean le Flambeur is pursued by an Oubliette investigator in a multi-planetary cat-and-mouse chase in worlds where people communicate through shared memories. Reprint.