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Second person, present tense.
“Eeyurgh, what could an editor be thinking when he/she lets an author go all cutesy writing in the second person?
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-10-30.
Making it even more grating is picking through three different POVs in a second-person narrative.
OK, now that that's off my chest, I admit enjoying the book anyway, even enough to give it 4 stars. It's going to be dated in a few years, but at the present time it's a great SF thriller. That I have a Chinese gold-farmer among my in-laws just gives it a special appeal to me, I guess.” -
Prescient?
“I found this quite interesting because of the plausibility and prescience of several themes:
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-08-28.
(a) The "crowdsourcing" of covert intelligence. Crowdsourcing is succeeding today; what if it was taken several levels more deeply, involving governments and national security, and the participants didn't even know it? Fascinating, and plausible, and quite possible.
(b) The shift of wars from physical to virtual. Wars have historically been about either ideology or control (direct or indirect) over things of value. Money today is simply a method of storing value that is accepted by all the players. Other things can store value, and the more we depend on virtually-stored value, the more vulnerable we become to surreptitious control - or loss of control - of that stored value. The notion that inter-nation wars might be fought over that virtual value is - again - plausible, and likely (?).
(c) The interconnection of virtual gaming environments. Today, online games live in their own silos. The idea that players might move from one game to another - directly within gaming space - is both plausible, and prescient.
This book weaves a good tale around these, and other concepts that "could happen." The author isn't trying to assert they will; but he weaves a wonderful tale that takes place within a _really_possible_ future -that is quite interesting, I must say. I heartily enjoyed it.” -
Brains. . . .
“Stross must have spent some serious time with an urban dictionary. He tosses off a combo of futuristic, grungy, urban, cyberpunk slang and Scottish dialect effortlessly. I found myself chuckling out loud at some of his turns of phrase and the evolution of terminology he events.
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-08-03.
I was less thrilled by the 2nd person narrative. Each chapter rotates to one of 3 different main characters, and I found the voice of each narrative to be too similar. I would have to go back to peek at the beginning of the chapter to remember which "you" I was suppose to be at the moment. I didn't particularly identify with any of them--the 2nd person didn't do anything to make me feel closer to the narrative and was quite distracting.
The plot set-up was well done, but the last half of the book gallops along, and the appearance of the super-spies from the EU, the death of one of the minor characters, and the flash mob of zombies feels like a half ton of deus ex machina poured on the plot. That said, I'd sit down with this again on a rainy day just to bask in the lingo.” -
1 of 1 members found this review helpful.
Kind of fun... kind of... meh.
“I was reading Ivanhoe simultaneously with Halting State, and it was probably a mistake to mix a great adventure yarn with one that's merely okay.
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-08-02.
If you've read a few of Stross's other works, especially the Bob Howard stories, you know the drill: geeky heroes and technical expositions with lots of genuine, current info and jargon mixed in with stuff Stross invented. Imagine a Bob Howard novel, except instead of computers and Cthulhu and magic, you have computers and spies and role-playing games.
Unlike the Howard stories, though, I had to *make* myself read this book. The first 40% is positively turgid: he's setting up the rest of the book, but seems to have forgotten how to keep things interesting. He also introduces you to the protagonists, and I kept thinking, "I'm supposed to care about these people, but actually... I don't." If you can imagine a humorless Bob Howard as a lesbian cop, a humorless Bob Howard as a straight female forensic accountant, and a humorless Bob Howard as a straight male games programmer... well, you get the drift. And can you guess who winds up in the obligatory romance?
The last 40% is a lot more fun, but you have to get there first. And it would all mostly be of interest if, like me, you're a geek computer programmer who knows a lot about data security and cryptography and gaming; if not, a lot of the discussion might as well be magical incantations written in ancient Akkadian.
I have a lot of sci-fi from the 30s-50s. Some of it is has aged well, and some is very dated and deservedly forgotten. Halting State is so much a product of the last half of the current decade that in twenty years, if anybody bothers to wade through it, they'll spend the entire time thinking, "How quaint!"” -
0 of 1 members found this review helpful.
Dull and slow
“I enjoyed "Toast" quite a bit. "Halting State", however, was slow and plodding and predictable. At least the first half was; I never made it to the second half. I gave up when the plot got too predictable and silly.”
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-05-06.
