The Fractal Prince

Jean le Flambeur #2

by Hannu Rajaniemi

“The good thing is, no one will ever die again. The bad thing is, everyone will want to.”
A physicist receives a mysterious paper. The ideas in it are far, far ahead of current thinking and quite, quite terrifying. In a city of “fast ones,” shadow players, and jinni, two sisters contemplate a revolution.
And on the edges of reality a thief, helped by a sardonic ship, is trying to break into a Schrödinger box for his patron. In the box is his freedom. Or not.

Jean de Flambeur is back. And he’s running out of time.

In Hannu Rajaniemi’s sparkling follow-up to the critically acclaimed international sensation The Quantum Thief, he returns to his awe-inspiring vision of the universe…and we discover what the future held for Earth.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Cyberpunk, Space Opera, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2012

About the author

EN: Hannu Rajaniemi is a Finnish author of science fiction and fantasy, who writes in both English and Finnish. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is a founding director of a technology consultancy company, ThinkTank Maths.

Rajaniemi was born in Ylivieska, Finland. He holds a B.Sc. in Mathematics from the University of Oulu, a Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. in Mathematical Physics from the University of Edinburgh. Prior to starting his Ph.D. candidature, he completed his national service as a research scientist for the Finnish Defence Forces.

While pursuing his Ph.D. in Edinburgh, Rajaniemi joined Writers' Bloc, a writers' group in Edinburgh that organizes semi-regular spoken word performances and counts Charlie Stross amongst its members. Early works included his first published short story Shibuya no Love in 2003 and his short story Deus Ex Homine in Nova Scotia, a 2005 anthology of Scottish science fiction and fantasy, which caught the attention of his current literary agent, John Jarrold.

Rajaniemi gained attention in October 2008 when John Jarrold secured a three-book deal for him with Gollancz, on the basis of only twenty-four double-spaced pages. His debut novel, The Quantum Thief, was published in September 2010 by Gollancz in Britain and in May 2011 by Tor Books in the U.S. A sequel, The Fractal Prince, was published in September 2012 by Gollancz and in November 2012 by Tor.

FI: Hannu Rajaniemi on Edinburgissa, Skotlannissa asuva suomalainen tieteiskirjailija, joka kirjoittaa sekäs suomeksi että englanniksi. Rajaniemi on opiskellut matemaattista fysiikkaa Oulun ja Cambridgen yliopistoissa ja väitellyt säieteoriasta filosofian tohtoriksi Edinburghin yliopistossa. Hän on perustajajäsen matematiikan ja tekniikan konsulttiyhtiössä nimeltä ThinkTank Maths.

Opiskellessaan Edinburgissa Rajaniemi liittyi kirjoittajaryhmään, joka järjesti tekstien lukutilaisuuksia. Hänen varhaisia novellejaan on ilmestynyt englanniksi Interzone-lehdessä ja Nova Scotia -antologiassa. Näistä jälkimmäinen kiinnitti Rajaniemen nykyisen kirjallisuusagentin kiinnostuksen vuonna 2005.

Vuonna 2008 Rajaniemi solmi kustannussopimuksen kolmesta romaanista brittiläisen Gollancz-kustantamon kanssa. Valmiina oli silloin ainoastaan romaanin yksi luku. Esikoisromaani The Quantum Thief ilmestyi syyskuussa 2010. Hänellä on näiden kolmen romaanin julkaisusopimus myös yhdysvaltalaisen Tor-kustantamon kanssa. Suomeksi Rajaniemen esikoisteoksen julkaisee Gummerus nimellä Kvanttivaras.

Reviews

[Petrik · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 stars

The Fractal Prince currently sits at the top of the most complex and difficult sci-fi book I’ve ever read; probably soon to be replaced by its sequel.

Rajaniemi continues his uncompromising no exposition storytelling style. Other than one or two short sentences, all terms were left unexplained; it’s up to the readers to make sense of what each terminology means from the narrative. For example gogols, Spimescape, Wildcode, and many more. Feel free to call me stupid or dumb if you want but I had to cheat a bit here. I almost DNFed this book at 30% mark because I understood almost nothing. Do not let the page count trick you into thinking this is a light sci-fi read, it’s absolutely not. If you’re checking this review because you’re thinking of giving up, I strongly suggest you check out these two wiki page; one being completely spoiler-free and the other one contain some spoilers.

http://www.karangill.com/glossary-qua... (completely spoiler-free glossary explanation.)

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of... (this one has spoilers for the first book and mini-spoiler for this book. But if you ended up checking this one you’ll probably appreciate the spoilers.)

This two list helped me immensely. I ended up enjoying this book so much more than before. The reason behind this is mostly because I sucked at math/physics and hard sci-fi is not a genre I visit often; especially when the level of hardness is as hard as Wakanda’s vibranium. I mean, for god sake, I was happy to get a 7/100 score on my physics final exam in high school, how the heck would I be able to understand this high concept sci-fi jargons without any exposition?

“If reality is not what you want it to be, change it.”

Picture: The Fractal Prince Chinese edition cover



Jean at this point has become something of a trickster archetype incarnate. Mieli’s past. Stories within stories, stories coming to life, wildcode, body swapping, identity theft; look, it’s too much to say in a review.

If you’re able to appreciate every idea that appeared in the book, I seriously think you’re going to end up putting this book/series into your favorites list. There were a lot of brilliant ideas that lie beneath the surface of the main plot and sci-fi jargon. I struggled during the first half but with the help of those two wiki page I mentioned, the second half of the book ended up becoming a very engaging ride, full of high concept and revelations. Metafictional stories-within-stories from multi-perspectives, switching back and forth between timelines, body swapping and identity theft; look, it’s impossible for me to explain all the things that made this book awesome, I seriously need a reread of the trilogy one day.

I know I’m not done with this trilogy yet but this two book alone, in my opinion, was more difficult than Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy already; For now, all I can say is that although I enjoyed this one—quite mind blown by the concepts too—I wasn’t able to fully appreciate every single thing that happened in this book. Once again, I can only recommend this book and trilogy to readers who love hard sci-fi with close to zero expositions. I highly doubt any new to sci-fi readers—unless they’re scientists, mathematicians—would be able to understand everything that Rajaniemi cooked up here. Consider yourself warned. Now, let me proceed to destroy my brain by reading the conclusion immediately.

You can find this and the rest of my Adult Epic/High Fantasy & Sci-Fi reviews at BookNest

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-Read 5/7/24:

I've said it before and I'll say it again: this series has got to be one of my all time-favorite SFs ever.

If anything, the second book is better than the first. Or perhaps, I just LOVE story-within-story stories more than anything else.

But here's the real scoop: There's nothing about this novel that I don't love.

That's right. It feels like perfection. It has wild future tech and a post-singularity universe, but it feels like a glorious romance right out of The Arabian Nights while simultaneously being a continuation of a hardcore Arsene Lupin novel.

I love everything about the Earth here. The wild code, the stories, the great tragedies, the Wrath.

But the end? My god, it blew me away.

This is going to be one of those novels I will always treasure.


Original Review:

“On the day the Hunter comes for me, I am killing ghost cats from the Schrödinger Box.”

I luuuuurve this opening line. His craft is exquisite, so far.

Update: The imagery is almost better than anything I've read in either sci-fi or fantasy. If you took out the better and deeper images from all thee matrix movies, threw them up against the wall with jinn and fairies and the greatest heist mysteries, heavily spiced it with near-impossible mathematical concepts and theorems that really need some deep explanations you're not going to even remotely get in this text, (save S. cat, but he gives a quick explanation for this one, although its been done in sci-fiction a lot already), you stir in planetary intelligences, diamond cities that crashed to earth, slow and quicktime peoples, AND warring sisters, then maybe you've got the first gorgeous fifty pages of this book. And don't forget to keep a copy of your mind before you read, or you might just lose a copy of your prime iteration. I want to give this 6 stars. Have I been waiting for something like this all my life since Singularity Sky? Maybe. :)

A quote:

"So. Sightseeing instead. How about watching a transhuman mind have a Hawking orgasm? From afar."
Mieli smiles. A warm rush of relief washes over her.
"I bet you say that to all the girls," she says.


The entire novel is poetry and math and all told with brilliant imagery. I've decided to bone up on my quantum physics, too, just so I can appreciate the story more. I may be relatively unique in this respect, because I don't really believe that general readership of sci-fi novels just "decide" to understand quantum physics in order to more fully appreciate a novel they had just read. Well, to be fair, I've read popular accounts in the past and have enjoyed them immensely, even if I pick up on less than one-tenth of the math. Ok, maybe I'm not that odd after all in wanting a greater understanding. At least, in this case, I feel really justified and encouraged after reading this brilliant work of math/fiction.

So I finished it and I can only say: Wow.

Well, I can say a lot more, because wow doesn't do it a third of justice. Or even an irrational third of justice.
What I will say is that these two books have now jumped to my top ten favorite books list. Together, because I don't want to cause other injustices to stories, and I have a very great feeling about the next book.

While I ought to recommend this book to everyone, I doubt it will be to everyone's taste. But then does everyone like Blake, Shakespeare, Manly P Hall's Secret Teachings of All Ages? Of course they should... But they are all very very different than this piece which might need to be its own genre from now on. I'm tempted to just transcend here and put an end to my misery.
Read em, peeps. Just read em, perhaps three times. You'll see.


Update, second read.

I laughed and I cried. I got more out of the whole story angle than I did the first time, all of the stories within stories, minds within stories, stories coming to life and eating your children, your children coming back from the dead to birth stories that would later eat the Earth and help the dead child become the God King of the Gogols? OH YES. Yes, yes, yes. A thousand times yes. He turned a fundamentally metafiction concept into a hypercube and spun it out with such verve and beauty as to kick my mind in its ass. I cannot say how much I loved this book. Again, much better the second time reading than the first, if possible, but I can't regret a single instant.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh... my.....god.....
Reading this diamond hard sci-fi novel is certainly not for space opera virgins. My mind is bleeding from the attempt. But then again nothing previously written in the genre (except volume one) could prepare one adequately for this frenetically paced, incredibly complex, fractally dense, relentlessly overwhelming work. It is post human, post singularity and post current imagination.
Sui generis indeed, and the gentle reader is not provided with a easy roadmap. Or a lifebelt. It's sink or swim, there is minimal explanation of the myriad of complex ideas, and I'm certain many will abandon ship by the third chapter.
For those who persevere, there is a delight of nested stories, and an unveiling of known and new protagonists. I am sure that the final novel will be a stunner.
All I can say is "here be dragons" and "you are not prepared".

[Майя Ставитская · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Fractal Prince" continues the story of post-singular society, described in a peculiar author's manner of "showing without telling". Rayaniemi literally silences the reader with an abnormal number of things difficult to perceive without a detailed explanation. He does not like to give explanations, because in the space of the book you lose your orientation, even being prepared by acquaintance with the first part.

And here the story of the dugout Tawaddud, built in the style of the "Thousand and One Nights", in the entourage of an Arabic fairy tale, becomes a lifeline.. We enjoy playing with new original toys, but we choose stability and predictability for life. The combination of the conservative ring structure of "fairy tales in a fairy tale" with the highest intelligence capacity is the secret of the attractiveness of this book.

Сингулярность и арабские сказки
Он пришел в город, забрал все разумы, превратил их в истории, сжал до размеров семечка, способного расцвести в любом сознании. Подарил вечную жизнь в пространстве книги под синей обложкой, вроде «Сказок тысячи и одной ночи».
Отличная новость для ценителей твердой НФ (я бы даже сказала твердейшей, твердокаменной - читать иных почти как глодать гранит и это тот самый случай). Но я о новости: Fanzon сделал аудиоверсию второй книги трилогии "Квантового вора" от финского писателя Ханну Райаниеми. Теперь, если у вас от чтения премудрого финна мозги встают раком "и мальчики кровавые в глазах", а иметь культовую книгу в читательском активе хочется, можно сделать это на слух.

"Фрактальный принц" продолжает историю постсингулярного общества, описанную в своеобразной авторской манере "показывать, не рассказывая". Райаниеми буквально глушит читателя аномальным количеством сложных для восприятия без подробного объяснения вещей. Объяснений давать он не любит, потому в пространстве книги теряешь ориентацию, даже будучи подготовленной знакомством с первой частью.

И здесь спасательным кругом становится история землянки Таваддуд, выстроенная в стилистике "Тысячи и одной ночи", в антураже арабской сказки.. Мы с удовольствием играем новыми оригинальными игрушками, но для жизни выбираем стабильность и предсказуемость. В сочетании консервативной кольцевой структуры "сказки в сказке" с высочайшей интеллектоемкостью секрет притягательности этой книги.

Один из секретов. Другой, и для меня он оказался решающим - исполнение Игоря Князева, в обществе которого продираться сквозь переусложненные понятийные кластеры не так страшно. И как. все-таки, бесподобно удаются этому артисту женские образы!

Однако вернемся к нашим гоголам. Во второй раз не откажу себе в удовольствии, сказать, что происхождением термин, которым в романе обозначаются те самые спресованные до состояния песчинки интеллекты из эпиграфа - происхождением он обязан вовсе не числу гуглл, а Николаю Васильевичу Гоголю с его " Мертвыми душами". Так-то, ребята. читайте классиков - будете как Ханну.

Миссия квантового вора Жака ле Ф��амбера, знакомого нам по первой одноименной книге трилогии, на сей раз лететь на Землю, чтобы разыскать и похитить ключевую. матричную личность полубога Матчека Чена. В этот поход его и бедняжку Миели с ее одушевленным кораблем Перхоннен (бабочка по-фнски) отряжает Жозефина Пелегрини, еще одна полубогиня из зоку.

А на Земле, совсем не похожей на нашу с вами нынешнюю голубую планету, опустошенной "диким кодом" (что-то, вроде инфовируса, в сингулярности, где сращение физического с информационным повсеместно - смертельного) - на земле борются могущественные кланы. Глава одного из них, авторитетный в городе Сирр Кассар Гомелец плетет интриги против Соборности, используя свою дочь Таведдад для соблазнения торговца гоголями Абу Нуваса.

Сказительница Таведдад (собственно, она сказительница Шахерезада в этом романе) опозорила семью разводом, а после спуталась с джинном - материальным воплощением дикого кода. Ах, как все сложно, но в этом-то вся и прелесть. На самом деле читать-понимать очень непросто. Этот роман не Эллочка Щукина, рост которой льстил мужчинам, потому что рядом с ней всякий чувствовал себя высоким, это такой книжный Эверест: сумеешь взойти - честь и слава тебе.

И таки да, оно того стоит. Не вечно же мир будет балансировать на грани. Авось выправится. И наступит она, вожделенная сингулярность, которая окончательно лишит нас всех надежд.

[Lightreads · Rating 3 out of 5]

More post singularity thief nonsense in a wildly inventive future solar system.

Look, the thing is. I like a story that skips infodumps as much as the next girl. The prequel had that great setup where you could actually steal time off of someone's life, and this book does the same trick of plopping you down into a culture and never actually explaining the rules so it takes a few hundred pages to figure shit out. He makes it worthwhile, because these settings really are great. But at a certain point, it is incumbent upon an author to ensure that his readers . . . this is awkward . . . can actually figure out what the fuck happened. Because I am a sophisticated and experienced reader, I read this book over a short period of time, I rewound to check certain sections again . . . and I'm still not sure.

It's supposed to be all *gestures* there's this puzzle box, and getting into it destroys parts of what's inside. And the book is supposed to be like that. Parts of it are supposed to be impenetrable (unlike your typical caper, which turns on the eventual flourishing reveal). And that's fine. But I finished it feeling that, for all its vivid textures and beautiful set pieces, this book simply failed to execute on its end of the reader-writer contract. I am assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that the key to the puzzle box is in the third book, but I'm frankly not convinced at this point that I want to bother.

[Mimi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wildly entertaining--it's another puzzle and heist and also an interesting colorful mix of science fiction and fantasy.

But to be completely honest, I understood maybe 50% of the plot and about 20% of the science and even less of the theoretical science. That didn't get in the way of my enjoyment of the story though. The prose is fast-paced and a lot of fun (the rollicking kind). Hannu Rajaniemi has an interesting way with words and a unique plotting style that kept me turning the pages late into the night, even though I wasn't entirely sure what was happening half the time I was reading or why I was staying up so late to get to the end of this mystery.

So in many ways, this book was the perfect distraction and exactly what I was looking for.



* * * * *

Update: January 2025

Rereading to see if I understand it better now and then moving onto the third and last book of this trilogy, hoping to complete it once and for all.

[Alexander Popov · Rating 5 out of 5]

(The review was originally posted in the blog Random's 23 Cents: http://mybiochemicalsky.wordpress.com...)

Step into the Palace of Stories, taste their body of fractals…

I gobbled The Fractal Prince up in just a few days, hungry to devour as many pages as possible during my daily commute between tube stations. Or maybe trying to slow down and savor them, sorry to see the book come to an end. Anything inducing such paradoxical states of mind must be more than just good. The follow-up to The Quantum Thief is full of such curiosities. It is pretty short as novels go and yet it feels vast, infinite even. The story is involved to the point of obfuscation, but each day I would sink effortlessly into its winding ways and half an hour later would pop out of the underground, one or more self-contained stories sparkling like exotic jewels in my mind. It is a labyrinth and a room full of mirrors where you can easily lose yourself (occasionally even your self) and where subliminal glimpses of massive creatures moving hidden underneath the surface will startle you, grand colorful illusions will dazzle, memes will burrow and most of what you know will be revealed as nothing more than shifting sands.

I don’t mean to suggest that Rajaniemi has already peaked as an author and his writing is a thesaurus of perfection. On the contrary, I think his talent has a lot of space to grow, his skills could be even sharper, the writing more profound. He is no Nabokov as of yet, but who knows where his craft will lead him. The Fractal Prince is incredibly bold in terms of formal experimentation, it holds true to the promise of its title and this alone makes the novel one of the most interesting reads of the year. In terms of content its predecessor – The Quantum Thief – dealt mostly with information privacy, veils and the rewriting of history. The Fractal Prince is even more ambitions: it focuses on the fractal nature of minds and stories, on the hidden warp and weft of information that structures the world.

This is a stunningly ambitious undertaking, even more so when you realize that Rajaniemi has tried to shape the plot itself as a fractal. On the surface of it the story is told by just a couple of characters. Beneath it though there is a cacophony of voices, each of them eager to tell its own story. The book is deliberately structured along the lines of One Thousand and One Nights and just like a fractal it exposes layers within layers within layers the deeper you go. Of course, the best a work of fiction can accomplish is an illusion of a fractal, but I’ll be damned if Hannu isn’t a master illusionist. Thus, The Fractal Prince resembles a strange breed of fruit – onion-like and many-headed, with smaller bulbs hiding within larger ones, their skins suffused with surprising flavors, which, when tasted, wake up unexpected associations, all of that fitting in a twisted multi-aspected mandala that nevertheless makes perfect sense. And then, when you are at least sure that you know your location on that bizarre map, you find it is curling back on itself and spewing you where you were in the beginning, or rather encapsulating the beginning, so that you wonder whether there is any point in keeping track of things or if everything isn’t just an endless ouroboros.

Somewhere along the Cosmic Highway, the trickster ex-god of thieves Jean le Flambeur, Mieli from Oort and her ship Perhonen are trying to gain leverage against the ruler of the Solar System and survive the Hunter that is after them. Jean is desperately trying to open a Schrödinger box holding a captive god. To do that he will have to hack into a zoku router and possibly kill a billion of hypothetical kittens. At the same time on Earth, in the last surviving human city – Sirr-in-the-sky – two sisters are playing a dangerous game of politics and story-telling. Tawaddud Gomelez, a stigmatized princess of Sirr, embodiment-slave and jinn’s whore, is this book’s Isidore, playing counterpoint to Jean’s story line. As in the previous one, the two eventually merge and this time the convergence is even more exquisite.

Not that I didn’t enjoy the young Martian detective and his zoku girlfriend but I found Tawaddud much more human and easy to relate to. The reasons for that are probably rooted in the respective environments of the novels. The Oubliette society of the previous installment had a working formula to beat death, it was gamified to the extreme, operating according to rules that resemble top-down-designed narratives. Even though still human, it was much cleaner, more abstracted somehow, its problems were issues of information privacy and security. Tawaddud’s world is much messier and fuzzy-bounded. It is a world of broken dreams, poormen and richmen, civilization and desert, jinns and body thieves. The story-within-story template captures that effectively, especially in Tawaddud’s character, which is probably the most complex so far. Given that a certain lack of depth in characterization remains as my biggest problem with the series, I feel that this is an important improvement and hope to see more of it in the books to come. Mieli too receives a more human portraiture in this book. Hers is a beautiful love story, though, sadly, told in too few pages. The supporting role award in this one, however, goes to Perhonen. A lovely butterfly of a spider-ship, wish I knew her. Jean, just as before, remains an enigma, a character that I still can’t make my about.

Baited by her sister Dunyazad, Tawaddud enters the politics of Sirr, which turns out to be a dizzying mess. It is bound to be, really, when tiny and unimportant post-Collapse Earth suddenly becomes a vortex of power play in the Solar System. Amidst that and Jean’s exploits, much is revealed about the world of the far future, much more than in The Quantum Thief. A lot of your expectations and understanding of the previous book will possibly not stand, at least some of mine didn’t. Even events that seemed explicitly disambiguated on Mars are complicated further, and for that reason it is probably a good idea to reread The Quantum Thief before diving into this one (an even better reason is that it’s great fun). A lot of the events in this book too may seem somewhat opaque, especially some threads in the explosive end part. The author firmly refuses to spoon feed his readers with justifications and explanations, and that is rather great and admirable, even if it is the source of occasional confusion. But there are simply so many miracles to show in this universe:

“Like Mieli, the ship is an uneasy amalgalm of Oortian and Sobornost, remade on Venus, hidden weapons and quantum armour and virs and gogols and antimatter, embedded in väki smartcoral like diamond insects in amber.”

No wonder there is an unchecked profusion of noun phrases, non-finite and verbless clauses on every page:

“Mieli floats in the spimescape, a ghost within the ghost of the ship. It is a representation of the worldlines all smartmatter leaves behind, from every nut and bolt of Perhonen to the System-wide machinery of the Highway. Reality overlaid with interpretation and explanation, cold physics caught in a cobweb of meaning.”

It is a feature of Rajaniemi’s writing that I’m not sure I like without reservations – coupled with the present tense narrative, it definitely contributes a somewhat static quality to the perception of imagery. Which is a paradox in itself, as The Fractal Prince is anything but static. It moves at the speed of light, literally, leaps and bounds and twists and never desists with the deluge of miracles. Now that I’m writing this, it strikes me that I can very easily visualize the narrative as a comic strip, delivering a rapid sequence of still images, each one etched on the page/mind with fastidious detail. The detached narrative voice that comes with noun-heavy writing is then transmogrified from a potential flaw to method of story-telling lifted from a slightly different media: semi-disembodied, semi-character-centered. An approach rather cleverly-fitted to the nature of the story; after all, it must be very difficult to depict post-human godlings, then why not tell it all from the vantage point of a high-speed camera, able to capture with fidelity everything from visuals to states of mind, though not necessarily able to explain it? I can almost imagine a graphic novel adaptation, or why not a quirky anime series with sufficiently brilliant art to render the awesomeness of Rajaniemi’s universe.

The wild metaphor chase in the last paragraph might seem too stretched but this is actually one of the coolest things about Rajaniemi’s writing. It invites you to construct meaning without ever slowing down to take a breath. To echo a famous cognitive linguist, it taps into the wide backstage of cognition and makes you work damn hard for your money. The amount of information analysis, conceptual blending and linguistic reverse-engineering one has to engage in to make sense of the text is staggering. Even more staggering is that the effort doesn’t really feel like work, it is simply that rewarding and enjoyable. Just think how much more your brain needs to accomplish in order to decode a thought-up word like “cleptography”. It requires accesses to at least two conceptual domains and the respective schemata associated with them; then you have to make the two work together as one and situate the new notion within the context of the novel, itself spun from countless such loci of meaning. Scale that up a thousand-fold and it might give you a relative idea how much on fire your brain is while processing such a text. The fact that you do want to process it is a sure sign that it packs a whole lot of pleasurable affective punch.

In fact, another element that potentially could be seen as a flaw is justified in a similar fashion. Rajaniemi might not be feeding us information in a very non-hard-sciences-academician-friendly fashion but his books are no strangers to occasional info-dumps. Without those they would take decades to write and would fill thousands of pages. Yet, here the notorious nemesis of good worldbuilding sits naturally, filtered through the idea of the Sobornost metaselves that tirelessly steer gogols to the fulfillment of The Great Common Task. And trust me, you will enjoy the info-dumps and fret over there being so little of them. The scale of Rajaniemi’s ideas and canvas-painting is awe-inspiring, sharing a league with The Hyperion Cantos. Which is veritable feat, to cram so much in such a lean page count. That is why such a methodology – of using language to uncover just the tip of meaning and let the reader figure the rest out – is entirely functional and adequate in this case. Moreover, Rajaniemi uses it to appeal to the senses too, it’s not reserved for the intellect alone. Consider these two instances of synaesthetic writing, quite common in the book:

“Below, the shopkeeper coughs again, a mucous, jagged sound.”

~

“Their descent brings a rush of waste heat and a tangy smell of overclocked metabolisms.”

But then again, to quote a famous Sobornost warmind: “Matter and mind. Dualism. Primitive distinctions. All is information.” So why should a writer’s method distinguish between mind and body?

The fabric of post-human wonders is especially dense on Earth. Sirr-in-the-sky is a proud heir to the Oubliette as one of the more jaw-dropping SF cities ever imagined. Its kilometer-long vertical Shards, remnants of a ruined space station, lighting up the night, the muhtasib aristocrats in palaces high up and the commoners on the ground, the angel-nets and the gogol merchants’ ships, the Fast Ones, the mutalibun and the body-thieves in the dessert… Ah, I will let you find about those on your own, explore the fractals in your unique way.

Apart from the sheer and stark awesomeness of the world and the intricacy of the plot, there are also the Big Ideas. And these are really huge in the second book, having leveled-up significantly. The motif of fractals is not spliced to the formal DNA of the novel merely for the coolness factor, it reflects a serious preoccupation with the mystery of minds and stories, myths and gods, past and future. The Great Task of the Sobornost comes into crisp resolution and its vision is pitched against the much more elusive essence of classic humanity and the zokus. The book trades in complex questions, such as why we need storytelling, what is consciousness (a strange loop, a self-loop?) and where to draw the boundary between human and non-human. Ideas that, as Rajaniemi admits, are pickpocketed from thinkers as diverse as Douglas Hofstadter, Andy Clarke and Carl Jung. The notion of memes/archetypes is particularly central to the book:

“But like my friend Isaac taught me a long ago on Mars, alcohol is not just about chemistry: it’s the meme, the feeling. Bacchus speaking in my head and making it all better.”

Jean himself is a kind of meme, the trickster archetype embodied in flesh, and this starts to show more and more as the series progresses. It will be interesting to read about the zoku point of view regarding these conundrums in the later chapters of the story. They seem particularly fond of untidy narratives and yet scorn run-of-the-mill humans as “meme-zombies”. Anyway, Rajaniemi does a fantastic job at presenting a metaphysical vision of a universe made of information. At certain points some of the ideas reminded me of Philip Dick’s deeply disturbing but insightfully graceful form of mysticism, only operationalized and made sane. The Finnish writer explores those problem spaces in his usual brisk fashion, so don’t expect a comprehensive argument, but be prepared to get you mind blown here and there along the fractal edges.

And if you have endured this review to its end and still aren’t convinced that The Fractal Prince could well be the best SF novel in 2012 (let’s see what Iank Banks has to offer before any rash pronouncements), consider the following. This is a book that can pull off this sentence: “I’m going to find a job that does not involve breaking into giant machines full of lesbian dragon sex.” Nothing more to say.

9/10

[Trish · Rating 5 out of 5]

This leaves off where the first book ended. So Jean has the Schrödinger's Box but still no memories. However, he knows that he, Mieli and the sentient ship need to go to Earth next.

We see more of the founders of the Zobernost and of Mieli's employer. Most importantly, though, we finally find out why Mieli is working for her in the first place and how Jean got caught and imprisoned! What this means is that this second installment has stories within the story - an element I highly enjoy if it's done well.

Interestingly, we also got a totally different POV: that of Tawaddud, a girl living in a city on Earth and member of a highly powerful / influential family. Apparently, this society is all about manipulating others, marrying or at least sexually trapping individuals for your personal gain - and their plans were interrupted when a local politican got murdered. Kinda like the chocolatier in the first book. But there is more in that this society is embroiled with the Sobernost.

Oh, and then there was ANOTHER layer to this book about a mysterious boy in a bookshop ... or was it a beach? ;)

So once again we got a murder investigation (of sorts), more quantum entanglement if you'll excuse the bad pun, and even wildcode. The other elements included background stories and some reveals that I shall not go into.

While the first book was mostly about the prisoner's dilemma, this one was more about Schrödinger's cat. What both have in common is that Jean is in a battle of wits against artificial intelligences, virtual realities, and post-singularity humans. The feel of this was much like that of the first book while the plot was nicely fresh while continuing the overall story.

Again, I was wonderfully entertained and puzzling out what was going on. But I also enjoyed the personal problems. Can't wait for the culmination of this all.

[Rachel (TheShadesofOrange) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
I'm not sure I understood most of this book but I enjoyed being confused.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing pleases me more than when a novel refuses the reader exposition. Instead, they immerse you in the world and let you sink or swim. And let me tell you, that first gulp of air is so sweet. I read 'The Quantum Thief,' to which this book is the sequel. I was worried that, having already swam in that ocean of post-human lives, sentient machines, and cultures based solely on MMORPGs, that navigating these waters would be too easy. I was delightfully wrong. I had many gasps of sweet sweet air, but I was deliciously worried that a wave will come crashing down on me and pull me under. Three cheers for 'The Fractal Prince.'

Jean le Flambeur, the gentleman thief, returns in this novel with a plan to steal the soul of a god. With the help of Mieli, the Oortian warrior woman, and Perhonen, the sentient ship, he travels to an Earth that is at once oddly familiar and unrecognizable.

Again, Hannu Rajaniemi creates a world where, try as you might, you cannot fully grasp it's intricacies. And you aren't supposed to (sometimes I wonder if even he does). This is a post-Singularity human microcosm where all the rules are different and even death can be overcome. A futurist might eagerly anticipate an Earth full of quantum tech, enslaved minds, and stories that can control your body. Or he might recoil in fear. Even the characters, who look at this strange new world with the same jaded eyes that your or I might view our own lives, sometimes react in terror to the ways it has changed.

Some authors take you to alien landscapes in distant galaxies to put a mirror up to humanity. Mr. Rajaniemi keeps us within our solar system, and holds that mirror to our nose. References to ancient human mythologies mixed with startlingly prescient visions keep us staring at that alien face, trying to find our own.

[✘✘ Sarah ✘✘ (former Nefarious Breeder of Murderous Crustaceans) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Actual rating: 2.6547886 stars.

① A 320-page book that feels like a 100,000-page one.



② This installment is even more confusing as fish than the previous one. (No small feat and stuff.)



③ I don't give a shrimp about any of the characters.



④ Bye now.

· Book 1: The Quantum Thief ★★★★

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is designed as a series recap in preparation of Causal Angel. You can also use it as a review of both novels if you haven't read them (though I can't guarantee it's spoiler free). I've also included a glossary of terms found within the series as well as a short essay on Zoku-Sobornost relations: these two absolutely contain spoilers! Please note that I created it prior to reading The Causal Angel and it contains some inaccuracies as it doesn't include information revealed in the final book.

Review of Rajaniemi’s Jean le Flambeur Series (May Contain Spoilers!)

What follows is a mini-review of the series to date, including the Finnish author’s The Quantum Thief(Book 1) and The Fractal Prince (Book 2).

The Quantum Thief is the beginning of Rajaniemi’s ambitious high-tech heist tale. It’s the tale of a superhuman thief named Jean le Flambeur. Jean has the ability to steal intangible things that are important in a high-tech world: things like quantum states and minds!

Oh yeah, did I mention that Hannu Rajaniemi studied quantum physics and possesses and in-depth knowledge of string theory? While the series puts the “hard” in hard sci-fi, it is also offset by plenty of adventure and fantasy. Despite what some reviewers claim, this series is easy-to-read and is a masterfully woven science fiction tale.

The futuristic universe described in the trilogy is a post-singularity setting. This means that humanity has achieved the ability to transcend physical bodies and live on various planets throughout our Solar System. The universal consensus in which their minds exist is known as the Sobornost.

Jean’s new body – given to him by Miele and her shadowy employer – is actually a Sobornost Founder’s creation. Its potential is limitless but Miele keeps tight control over it. Unfortunately there’s another catch: he’s incomplete and broken.

In Quantum Thief, we’re introduced to Jean when he’s rescued by a combat-ready winged soldier named Mieli. Mieli is his partner and employer during the series. She rescues Jean from a Dilemma Prison: a crystal clear structure in space that pits your mind against you, requiring you to make impossible decisions only to die an infinite number of times. But the true gem is not the witty and wild rogue Jean, it’s the Oubliette.

The Oubliette – the primary location of Quantum Thief – is a moving city on Mars. Unlike other novels, the city’s currency is Time; each individual possesses a temporal allotment, when one’s Time runs out their minds enter Quiet. Those in Quiet become semi-automatons used to maintain the Oubliette.

But unlike other novels that have similar storylines, Rajaniemi designed a social exchange element that marks the Quantum Thief as one of the most interesting stories I’ve ever read. The gevulot is an asymmetric cryptographic system similar to public key encryption that allows citizens to share what they want about themselves (gevulot requests are handled with a thought and can include one’s entire past).

One of the coolest things about gevulot is the concept of Agoras. These locations are “public squares” where all information is recorded in exomemory. Elsewhere in the Oubliette, people share what they want including their presence! For example, Jean’s antithesis - Isidore Beautrelet, a young investigator – lives in an apartment with another person. Although Isidore can be in the same room as his roommate, he doesn’t actually see her unless she allows for it.

Without giving too much information away, Jean goes to the Oubliette in hopes of recovering lost memories of his past. While attempting to restore himself to his former glory, Jean will learn about the city’s power structure all the while trying to evade Isidore Beautrelet.

An interesting concept in the novel is that of the Zoku: a group of individuals opposed to the Sobornost. They create video game-like environments, virs – virtual environments – or realmspace as the Zoku call it. They are based on an MMO clan; they have achieved immortality not from uploading their minds to Sobornost systems but to their own. Surprisingly this isn’t as corny as it may sound to some, it’s really unique an intriguing.

One of the other cool things about the novel is the third main character: Mieli’s sapphire ship which resembles a spider and its web: each segment is like a teardrop caught in the web-like design surrounding it. The ship itself is alive – it is named Perhonen - and represents itself through butterfly avatars.

The second novel in the series, The Fractal Prince, is a lot different than The Quantum Thief. While the latter was groundbreaking and significant, the former is a story about the same universe. It does follow the events in the first book but it’s also a lot less awe inspiring than the first novel.

The Fractal Prince is about the Sobornost and a war-torn Earth. Earth has only one significant city left – Sirr – all the others have been abandoned though a plague of nanites known as wildcode. These nano-machines warp everything they touch into surreal mutations. It is noted that Sirr was once “Sirr-in-the-Sky” but that city has since been destroyed, the last human remnants inhabit the wastelands below it on the Earth’s surface.

Sirr is actually an extremely interesting place (despite the fact that it isn’t as cool as the Oubliette). The story told there intentionally mimics One Thousand and One Nights. Sirr is an Arabian-esque Middle Eastern city complete with souqs. The main currency is Gogols sold by Gogol hunters and traders (Gogols are from the The Quantum Thief and are minds with or without bodies). Seals protect the city from wildcode. The ruling rich live on vertical “Shards” made by broken spires from when Sirr-in-the-Sky fell from the clouds.

There are a number of storylines present in Fractal Prince and to describe them all would be too much of a spoiler. One of the primary plots is about a storyteller and jinn lover named Tawaddud. (Unlike spirit-based jinn found in Arabian folklore, these are actually body-less Gogols.) Tawaddud must solve a criminal case while trying to overcome social stigmas placed on her by others.

Ontological subjectivity – reality made possible through storytelling, and various character viewpoints of them – is a chief theme present throughout the second book. Even the chapter layout itself has significance. There is no one main story: the plots change from Mieli/Jean to Tawaddud/Sirr, again and again until the novel’s conclusion. Some readers find some of the concepts difficult to understand (such as the idea of realities within realities), but these concepts are presented in clear ways that are not didactic or superfluous.

If The Quantum Thief’s detailed universe sparked your interest, you’ll love how Fractal Prince fleshes out the Sobornost, virtual realities (virs), Guberniyas, Jean’s personality and motives, morality and ethics in a post-singularity world, the Aun of Earth and more. The best way to read the books is to supplement your reading by checking out the various Wikis on the web (such as the Exomemory Wiki and the Jean le Flambeur Character List page on Wikipedia).

While I know I’ve been somewhat vague in my review of The Fractal Prince, I think the novel is worth reading for fans of The Quantum Thief. It truly is a natural progression in the life and times of Jean le Flambeur. For that reason it cannot be read without reading the first novel. The concepts present would not be well understood.

The third novel in the series – The Causal Angel – will be released by Tor in April 2014 in England and May 2014 in the United States. I eagerly await the latest release of what I consider to be one of the most finely crafted sci-fi series in recent history.

Series Rating So Far: 5/5

Quick Guide to Terms & Extra Notes(Contains Spoilers)

I wrote few brief notes for folks that may be confused with some of the terms used in either book one or book two. The terms below are in no particular order and contain spoilers. This glossary would be of most interest to readers after finishing The Fractal Prince and in preparing for The Causal Angel.

***

The Sobernost – An effort and collective on the part of its founders to uphold The Great Common Task and upload their minds to digital form so that death may be eradicated (quantum mechanics and quantum technologies are leveraged to do this). The Sobornost refers to this consensus of minds: the dominant minds - that of the Founders - shape the trilogy's solar system (a post-singularity Milky Way).

The Great Common Task (GCT) - Mass uploads of one's mind/consciousness to the Sobornost collective. The goal is to completely eradicate death. This is the Sobornost's leading philosophy and goal. Nothing else seems to matter to them (well, the Founders also like vying for power).

Guberniyas, Stories, Reality and the Mind – Guberniyas are HQs for Founders as well as a mode of transportation. They also reinforce the idea of "stories within stories" as they can be used to create virtual environments (virs). Founders generally live in their Guberniyas where they have complete control. Again a critical takeaway from Fractal Prince is the idea of subjectivity. That is to say that that an Aun or Founder's view of the universe literally shapes it and manifests itself via story-like elements (imposition of one's will over another can be seen by individuals minds - Gogols - working at the behest of one of the Sobornost founders). It is only when these realities collide that subjective world views fight for dominance (such is what occurs in Fractal Prince).

The Zoku - The secondary force in the universe that opposes the ideals of the Sobornost (actually, they oppose the GCT and believe in one life and death afterwards). They are modeled after an MMO guild and, as such, enter into quantum-created realmspaces wearing armor and riding strange animal mounts. Zoku realmspaces are not fake: in they are generated with Zoku jewels and – more often – with space-based generators as seen in The Fractal Prince.

The Zoku are an ideal: a carefree group that both embrace the post-singularity world and yet maintain their humanity (unlike the lofty goals of the Sobornost). Realizing that most sci-fi readers are probably into gaming, Rajaniemi seems to have taken it one step further with the Zoku. This is kind of cool. Plus gamers have the coolest tech, right? GPGPUs anyone? Okay, maybe that’s just my interpretation! See the section below for my personal understanding of the Zoku-Sobornost conflict.

No-Cloning Theorem (Zoku) – Heavily opposed to the GCT, the Zoku have adopted a policy of no cloning or mind uploading. Each mind is unique. The Sobornost have exploited their cloning/copying with the advent of Founder copyclans and – more significantly – enslaving Gogols to power Sobornost technology or aid in Sobornost agendas.

Copyclans and Sobornost Bodies – Usually Sobornost Founders have copyclans. This means they have clones of themselves which also experience life, often elsewhere on some other planet. They are not Prime; Prime is one’s active body, usually the first. It is akin to saying, “I have a clone.” But the clone would not be you really, just a copy of you. Copyclans are not simply clones: they are entire clone clans, hundreds of clones (hence why Sobornost Founders have them readily available).

One can sense what is occurring to his or her copies if they have Sobortech in their bodies. Sobornost bodies can activate the abilities inherent in their “metacortex” and become physically God-like (this is usually temporary unless they are actually Founders within their own domain; this is “unlocking” is very much like the anime Hellsing, both Mieli and Jean do this regularly throughout the series).

Jean’s body in both books was designed by the Pellegrini; as such it contains near-limitless powers. Unfortunately the Pellegrini locked Jean’s powers in hopes of controlling him.

Virs – virtual realities whereby an individual can experience things. Zoku Realmspace and Sobornost Founder guberniyas are types of virs. Virs run inside one’s head, like software.

Quantum State – refers to the status of a quantum-based element or device that makes use of them (quantum states that is). In The Quantum Thief, one’s Watch displays the Time an individual has left before he or she enters Quiet (public service, so to speak). The signals sent to and from the Watch reflect different quantum states.

Matjek Chen – The Prime of his Self in The Fractal Prince and leader of the Sobornost. The GCT was his own design.

It is significant that Matjek is the Prime of himself and not a clone because it shows us that he is fairly uncontested, even if other Founders are vying for power. Matjek is seemingly a constant in the solar system depicted in this series. Furthermore, the events at the end of The Fractal Prince support the notion that much of the known solar system is driven by Matjek Chen’s mind (although, Matjek Chen’s Guberniya must “travel” to Earth in The Fractal Prince, this seems to indicate that the series does not take place solely in Matjek’s mind, merely that his will is very influential in the Sobornost collective).

Matjek Chen was once an ordinary man from Earth that was placed in Guberniya safe haven by his parents. It is assumed that Matjek left Earth after it was devastated by nanites. Matjek was also friendly with the flower prince in le Flambeur’s "human days."

Aun – The Aun are primal “Gods” of Earth that existed well before the Sobornost. They propagated and survived through storytelling and belief, existing primarily in the minds of Earth’s inhabitants. It is strongly hinted at that le Flambeur is an Aun: possibly one that somehow received a Sobornost mind upload (he is not confined to Earth or body-less). It is much more likely that le Flambeur is a primal archetype for all subtle dealings, thievery and trickery (akin to the Norse Loki).

The Dragon Jewel - Releases a world breaking Sobornost Dragon. This becomes important (note that this does not refer to the Kaminari Jewel).

The Kaminari Jewel – Jean stole this Zoku jewel from the base on the Oubliette. The item is a reality-shaper like all Zoku jewels but also seems to possess significantly more power than otherwise mentioned. It is determined in The Fractal Prince that the Chen will stop at nothing to recover this jewel, thus it is of significant importance to the Pellegrini and her plans for Founder-dominance as well.

With the Kaminari Jewel, the Chen believes that he can stop death in the universe immediately (it is assumed that that – like other Zoku jewels – it affects reality itself and thus can be much more effective than the GCT alone).

Singularity (Metaphysical) – A singularity is an event that is either technological in nature or biological; it is when human intelligence or technology reaches such a point where it transcends the now. It literally becomes fluid: changing often, immediately and changes one’s perceptions of reality (presumably).

Singularity (Physics/Astrophysics) – A black black hole which are all (or part) consuming; the Sobornost have the ability to create black holes and use them to terraform planets, making them more conducive to Sobornost technology. Interestingly a similar technology is used to harness a sun’s power in order to fuel Sobornost technology (making power plants by sucking up solar radiation).

Oubliette – Moving city on Mars; people on Mars do not openly accept the Sobornost ideals.

Voice – Consensus votes within the Oubliette.

Cryptarch – Leader of Oubliette and enigmatic. This leader does not take an apparent role in events concerning the Oubliette. The Cryptarch’s identity is revealed in The Quantum Thief.

tzaddik – Zoku-powered vigilantes that patrol the Oubliette in hopes of thwarting crime. They also help keep the Sobornost from returning to the Oubliette.

Flower Prince – Jean le Flambleur – as silly as the name sounds, he is called this because he often has a single flower in his lapel. This is a term used in The Fractal Prince. It is also a term used with great respect, as if le Flambeur were a great person.

Jean le Flambeur - Gentlemen Thief; Mind Burglar, Quantum Thief. Nice dressed, often silly, very serious as of late. Whether or not Flambeur is actually a Founder or in some way associated with the Primes is unknown. He claims to have been around long before the singularity. He met Matjek Chen in his youth and drank beer with him on one particular occasion.

Memories – Not a term exactly: Jean le Flambleur has fragmented memory of who he was prior to being imprisoned in the dilemma prison. This restricts his potential. In order to fulfill the Pellegrini’s goals, he must unlock this knowledge.

Josephine Pellegrini – or “the Pellegrini” – is a Founder known to be cruel. She apparently has feelings for Jean. She also wants Jean to embrace his “old ways” and aid her in her mysterious quest. She’s conniving and self-absorbed.

Sydan – An Oort female that Mieli fights to see again. In The Fractal Prince Sydan’s fate is explored to some degree: when Venus underwent a Sobornost singularity, she was trapped by the devastation. She was then sucked into the planet’s core (presumably). The Pellegrini claims that she can help Mieli get back her love. Whether this is true is unknown.

Short Essay on Zoku-Sobornost Relations
(This was written prior to reading The Causal Angel and may contain many errors for things that were unknown to me prior to finishing the series)

Assent/Consensus vs. Humanity/Evolution - One of the most interesting elements of the series to date is that of humanity or, more specifically, what it means to be human. The Sobornost appear to favor conformity, a universal consensus, immortality and assent. The latter presents itself in the form of the All Defector and directly supports these themes.

Although Jean believes that the All Defector is a natural progression of the dilemma prison’s programming, it’s just as likely that the Zoku designed the All Defector as a virus or as a way to introduce a chaotic element (chance or uncertainty) into an otherwise fixed system (the prison supports the Sobornost ideals of assent, surrender and “group-think.” While this is just my opinion, it does keep true to the central themes of the series.

Furthermore, the Zoku are gamers at heart: they embrace chaos, disorder and mortality. We see this in their opposition to the GCT, their strong desire to live life to its fullest and to promote evolution.

The Zoku support evolution as seen through their support of conflict, life, death and change. Raiding and competition is at the heart of what makes MMOs strong, it’s also symbolic of an evolutionary-type survival of the fittest. The Sobornost do not embrace this. Extinction is a concept which the Sobornost fight vehemently against.

Interestingly, in most science fiction stories we either see either a Sobornost-like theme (usually a novel set in a dystopian future), or a Zoku-like high-tech Utopia: rarely do we see both elements in the same tale.

This Freedom vs. Consensus conflict is masterfully highlighted by Rajaniemi in both The Quantum Thief and The Fractal Prince. The Zoku's tale is the only one left to tell and it'll be the focus of his next book set to release in May 2014!

[Liviu Szoke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dacă Hoțul Cuantic a fost o încântare prin noutatea multitudinii de idei expuse, de la acest al doilea volum aveam așteptări și mai mari: în primul rând să primim și noi niște explicații cu privire la acele idei, cu privire la ce s-a întâmplat în viitor de s-a schimbat atât de mult, încât a devenit mult prea straniu și de citit despre el, nu mai spun de înțeles; însă autorul păstrează vălul de mister și aruncă idei cu toptanul pe fiecare pagină, realizând un roman interesant, nimic de zis, însă parcă un pic prea greu de urmărit. Iar personajele par atât de ciudate și acțiunile lor atât de alambicate, încât pur și simplu te amețesc. Recenzia, pe Blogul FanSF: http://wp.me/pz4D9-2q1.

[Panda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Audiobook (10 hours) narrated by Scott Brick
Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc

I am a Scott Brick fan. He has won several awards for his narration skills. While not every narration I have experienced is an award winning experiences, all have been above average to excellent.
The audio is flawless.

The Fractal Prince is the second book of The Jean le Flambeur trilogy. While I liked the first book of the series, The Quantum Thief, it was a bit busy and tedious at times. I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue with the series as it was a more middle of the road novel for me, but it was so different that I decided to put it on hold and see what happened when it came up in the queue.

When I started the book, it immediately brought me back to the alien detective feel. The characters are uniquely who they are and my mind was like 'Oh! Yeah, it's this series!' but also, 'Uhhh, I'm not sure that I want to work through a novel right now. I kind of just want to enjoy the read and the ride.' So ultimately this just needs the right time and place to fully get into such a novel.

I am not going to go to the third novel at this time. If, at a later date, I am feeling it and my mind wonders what was going on, I will likely seek out the full trilogy version so that I can refresh what I have read already, and just read the entire thing in one go. While there isn't a right or wrong way to read, I think that some stories feel better when I can indulge in binging the entire series at once, when in the mood of, course! This is one of those that I think really would do well with a good binging.

Happy Reading!

[Daniel Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the reasons I read non-fiction and classics is that they tend to challenge me more than the books I enjoy reading the most. I'll pick up science-fiction or fantasy because I want to escape, relax, and take a break. But too much, and I get bored.

I did not have that problem when I read this book. Not one bit.

Hannu Rajaniemi, though, has found a way to both escape and challenge my mind at the same time. The challenge is such that, as I have seen one reviewer note, I would not recommend Rajaniemi's The Quantum Thief trilogy to the "uninitiated" to science fiction. Unlike the Star Wars, or even Star Trek, universes, where the laws of science are as ignored as any swords and sorcery fantasy (and, indeed, Luke Skywalker may have more in common with the questing, sword welding hero than not), Rajaniemi does not ignore physics.

He just finds a way to weld physics to do what he wants.

This is not to say that The Fractal Prince is dry and sodden down by the weight of physics. In fact, quite the contrary. Instead, the writing moves so fast, so quickly, that it is only the sprinkling of labels and jargon that reminds me that Rajaniemi is even thinking about it. What makes it feel real is this very awareness. The Fractal Prince is so far into the future that it is difficult recognizing what humanity has become. A lot of writers decide to slow down the technological progress when this happens to enable them to anchor their story in a reality that is easier to describe, if just because it looks like our own reality, but more shiny, with more space ships that look and move like gravity bound jet craft and laser guns that act more like semi-automatic firearms.

Perhaps it is because Rananiemi's is so cavalier about his ambition to create and remain honest to the setting of his story that his ambition is understated. In the universe of The Quantum Thief --who we might as well just call by name--in Jean de Flambeu's universe, we cannot help but see the characters as foreign, even alien. Gods and goddesses compete with warminds and self-loops, and a dozen other entities, all apparently descended from the race we call humanity, somehow melded by technology and preserved, copied, enhanced, and expanded.

And if that doesn't all blow your mind (at least when you read it), it's probably because you've become lost in the jargon. Rajanamiemi pulls terms from a half dozen languages that are not native to our planet, but totally uncommon to the western reader. I admit that I drew on Google more than once to get the gist for what he was intending with a word, and then even then I had to add to what I found an expanded understanding of what it meant in the context of the Quantum Thief, universe. Russian, Japanese, and Finnish all contribute to the vocabulary.

Pick up the book, though, push through the vocabulary, and you might find yourself a story that is both creative and familiar. Taking place in the space between Mars, where most of the plot in the first book in the trilogy took place, and Earth and on Earth itself, The Fractal Prince takes a page from A Thousand and One Nights . Not only is the setting of the heist a world reminiscent of the pre-Islamic Arabic world, but takes place in a shining city on the edge of a hostile desert, where decay and corruption are hiding just below the surface and where a story is as forbidden as the worship of images in modern day Islam. And yet, like our own world, the forbidden become a currency in themselves...

At its root, under all the science, the fiction, the clever jargon and imaginative settings, this is the story of a heist, and Rajanamiemi lays the pieces in place carefully, hiding strings until the end, letting the reader see them only as the plot comes together to a final denoument that is fully satisfying.

But do not going into it without your eyes wide open. This is not space opera. It's science fiction, and Rajanamiemi does it well. It will both challenge and entertain, and really, that's what good fiction should do.

[Miki · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the previous book, but I read it too long ago to remember if I found it as hard to grasp as this one. There's several story-lines that play out simultaneously in very different worlds, and on top of that there's what feels like a very deliberate tribute to 1001 Nights in the use of nested stories and many of the universe's elements. Once everything is revealed, the layering and plot manipulations are simply grand, but I was well past the halfway point of the book before I felt like I had a handle on what was happening. This book is very worthwhile, but probably best paired with ADHD medication.

[Kostas · Rating 4 out of 5]

7.5/10

Returning to the futuristic Solar System of his highly-acclaimed debut novel, The Quantum Thief, after a dynamic entry to the science fiction field that brought to the forefront his talents, Hannu Rajaniemi comes in The Fractal Prince, the second book featuring the gentleman thief Jean le Flambeur, with a different style, traveling us in a story of body thieves, jinni, aristocrats and hunters, but also in an adventure of immortality, love and betrayal, in an imaginative, ambitious sequel.

Ever since the rest of humanity fled after the Collapse, the Earth, devoured by the roaming wildcode, has become a place of deserts and death, forcing the remaining survivors to seek for their own fate in this new, hard world; until the Sobornost came on the Cry of Wrath and brought something much worse that changed their lives forever - but Jean le Flambeur, having left his old self back on Mars, has spend the last few months aboard Mieli’s Perhonen traveling toward Earth, and their next mission, trying to figure out how to open the Schrödinger Box.
Attacked out of the blue by the Hunter, leaving the spidership wounded and them injured, le Flambeur will have to find as quickly as possible for a way to open the Box, and to escape its traces before he catches him and loses everything he knew once more.
Yet, with the Hunter to have followed him across the System, forcing him to take drastic measures to save his skin, when something indescribably jumps out from the Box, and the ship slowly begins to be eaten alive, le Flambeur will be faced with a situation that will make their journey to Earth even more difficult, and the fulfillment of his debt to seem almost impossible.

Meanwhile in Sirr, the last human city on Earth, Tawaddud of House Gomelez, having after her escape from her first husband fall in love with a monster who showed her a very different world, has been spending her free time entertaining her jinni clients through her stories, and healing the small and the weak of the Banu Sasan from wildcode infections that have made her the black sheep of her family, and a shame in her father's eyes.
But, with the Councilwoman Alile Soarez to have died unexpectedly under mysterious circumstances at the most critical moment, endangering the negotiations of the Cry of Wrath Accords with their breakup, when her sister Dunyazad asks her on behalf of their father to court Abu Nawus, one of the richest gogol merchants, to stabilize their position in the Council, and to assist the Sobornost envoy in his investigation for the reasons behind the Councilwoman’s death, Tawaddud will find herself soon in a game of politics beyond her depth that could very easily cost her everything.

While Mieli, having given everything she had to the pellegrini to bring back someone who she loved deeply like no one else, serving her blindly over the years, and taking one job after the other, when she discovers the true purpose behind their new mission that she and the thief have undertaken to fulfill on Earth, she will have to make a difficult decision that will test her very beliefs and her loyalty more than ever.

However, with their adventures to have been instigated through schemes and manipulations for power, revealing a deep betrayal, when a battle for supremacy breaks out among the Sobornost, and a long-contained creation of unstoppable power gets unleashed upon Earth, le Flambeur, Mieli and Tawaddud will find themselves into a conflict of gods and immortal beings that, if they make the wrong choices, may threaten with the annihilation the people of Sirr and humanity's home planet as never before.

After a first book that introduced us to his futuristic Solar System, and to the unusual world of his imagination and scientific ideas, Hannu Rajaniemi takes us in The Fractal Prince into humanity's home planet: Earth, and in the city of Sirr where the ruling families of the muhtasib - entwined with their qarin jinn companions in a unique way that gives them a much different view of the world - have the ability through the Secret Names to create Seals that protect them from the wildcode that devours everything in its path; the mutalibun treasure-hunters who, with their people having opened a trade of goods with the Sobornost after the Cry of Wrath in exchange for gogol souls, have become the richest merchants; the jinn thought-forms which, unlike gogols - the software of the uploaded mind - that are controlled by their masters, can possess by force any body if they wish, and make unspeakable debaucheries; and finally the Aun who, living through the stories of their worshipers, have become their own gods.

As well as into the history of the Founders, taking us into their lives before the Collapse to their rising to the collective force of the Sobornost, showing us their past, their experiments and their mistakes, their dealings with the protagonists, their war with the zoku, and their unstoppable hunger for power - a side that reveals something more innocent but also something far darker.

A sequel in which, drawing inspiration this time from the Middle-Eastern collection One Thousand and One Nights (or otherwise known as Arabian Nights), using the same frame narrative, as well as from the though experiment of Schrödinger’s Cat, Rajaniemi makes through his intricate prose an incredible novel of interconnected stories of the past and the present, giving it a much more dreamlike element, and traveling us in an adventure of body thieves, aristocrats, hunters, dragons and jinni, mixing his scientific knowledge with his imagination and the action scenes, and creating again something very unique - and, although the book may become as spectacular as The Quantum Thief, it is certain that we can not ignore his big ambition for something new and different.

In short, The Fractal Prince is an ambitious second book in the series of the gentleman thief Jean le Flambeur, with Hannu Rajaniemi to travel us into the Earth and humanity's place of origin, in an adventure of interconnected stories that blends together body thieves, aristocrats and hunters with deep scientific knowledge and high imagination, and creating something wonderfully unique.


Ελληνική κριτική:
Επιστρέφοντας στο φουτουριστικό Ηλιακό Σύστημα του πολυαναγνωρισμένου μυθιστορηματικού ντεμπούτου του, το The Quantum Thief, μετά από μια δυναμική είσοδο στον χώρο της επιστημονικής φαντασίας που έφερε στο προσκήνιο τα ταλέντα του, ο Hannu Rajaniemi έρχεται στο The Fractal Prince, το δεύτερο βιβλίο που παρουσιάζει τον τζέντλεμαν κλέφτη Jean le Flambeur, με ένα αρκετά διαφορετικό στυλ, ταξιδεύοντάς μας σε μια ιστορία κλεφτών του σώματος, τζίνι, αριστοκρατών και κυνηγών, αλλά και σε μια περιπέτεια αθανασίας, αγάπης και προδοσίας, σε μια ευφάνταστη, φιλόδοξη συνέχεια.

Από τότε που η υπόλοιπη ανθρωπότητα τράπηκε σε φυγή μετά την Κατάρρευση, η Γη, καταβροχθισμένη από τον περιπλανώμενο άγριο κώδικα, έχει γίνει ένα μέρος ερήμων και θανάτου, αναγκάζοντας τους εναπομείναντες επιζώντες να αναζητήσουν για την δικιά τους μοίρα σε αυτό τον νέο, σκληρό κόσμο• μέχρι που οι Sobornost ήρθαν στην Κραυγή της Οργής και έφεραν κάτι πολύ χειρότερο που άλλαξε τις ζωές τους για πάντα - αλλά ο Jean le Flambeur, έχοντας αφήσει το κομμάτι του παλιού του εαυτού πίσω στον Άρη, έχει περάσει τους τελευταίους μήνες επάνω στο Perhonen της Mieli ταξιδεύοντας προς την Γη, και την επόμενη αποστολή τους, προσπαθώντας να καταλάβει πώς να ανοίξει το Κουτί Schrödinger.
Επιτιθέμενοι από το πουθενά από τον Κυνηγό, αφήνοντας το αραχνόπλοιο τραυματισμένο και αυτούς πληγωμένους, ο le Flambeur θα πρέπει να βρει όσο πιο γρήγορα γίνεται για ένα τρόπο για να ανοίξει το Κουτί, και να ξεφύγει από τα ίχνη του πριν τον πιάσει και χάσει όλα όσα ήξερε για άλλη μια φορά.
Κι όμως, με τον Κυνηγό να τον έχει ακολουθήσει σε όλο το Σύστημα, αναγκάζοντάς τον να πάρει δραστικά μέτρα για να σώσει το τομάρι του, όταν κάτι απερίγραπτο ξεπηδήσει από το Κουτί, και το πλοίο αρχίσει σιγά-σιγά να τρώγεται ζωντανό, ο le Flambeur θα βρεθεί αντιμέτωπος με μια κατάσταση που θα κάνει το ταξίδι τους στην Γη ακόμα πιο δύσκολο, και την εκπλήρωση του χρέους του να φαίνεται σχεδόν αδύνατο.

Εν τω μεταξύ στην Sirr, την τελευταία ανθρώπινη πόλη στην Γη, η Tawaddud του Οίκου Gomelez, έχοντας μετά την φυγή της από τον πρώτο της σύζυγο ερωτευτεί ένα τέρας που τις έδειξε ένα πολύ διαφορετικό κόσμο, περνάει τον ελεύθερο χρόνο της ψυχαγωγώντας τους τζίνι πελάτες της μέσα από τις ιστορίες της, και θεραπεύοντας τους μικρούς και τους αδύναμους του Banu Sasan από τις μολύνσεις του άγριου κώδικα που την έχουν κάνει το μαύρο πρόβατο της οικογενείας της, και μια ντροπή στα μάτια του πατέρα της.
Όμως, με την Σύμβουλο Alile Soarez να έχει πεθάνει αναπάντεχα κάτω από μυστηριώδεις περιστάσεις την πιο κρίσιμη στιγμή, διακινδυνεύοντας τις διαπραγματεύσεις των Συμφωνιών της Κραυγής της Οργής με την διάλυσή τους, όταν η αδερφή της Dunyazad της ζητήσει εκ μέρους του π��τέρα τους να κορτάρει τον Abu Nawus, έναν από τους πλουσιότερους εμπόρους γκόγκολ, για να σταθεροποιήσουν την θέση τους στο Συμβούλιο, και να βοηθήσει τον Sobornost απεσταλμένο στην έρευνα του για τους λόγους πίσω από το θάνατο της Συμβούλου, η Tawaddud θα βρεθεί σύντομα μέσα σε ένα παιχνίδι πολιτικής πέρα από τα νερά της που θα μπορούσε πολύ εύκολα να τις κοστίσει τα πάντα.

Ενώ η Mieli, έχοντας δώσει όλα όσα είχε στην pellegrini για να φέρει πίσω κάποια που αγάπησε βαθιά όσο καμία άλλη, υπηρετώντας την τυφλά με τα χρόνια, και παίρνοντας τη μία δουλειά μετά την άλλη, όταν ανακαλύψει τον αληθινό σκοπό πίσω από την νέα τους αποστολή που αυτή και ο κλέφτης ανέλαβαν να εκπληρώσουν στην Γη, θα πρέπει να πάρει μια δύσκολη απόφαση που θα δοκιμάσει τα ίδια της τα πιστεύω και την αφοσίωσή της περισσότερο από ποτέ.

Ωστόσο, με τις περιπέτειές τους να έχουν υποκινηθεί μέσα από σκευωρίες και χειραγωγήσεις για την εξουσία, αποκαλύπτοντας μια βαθιά προδοσία, όταν μια μάχη για την υπεροχή ξεσπάσει ανάμεσα στους Sobornost, και μια μακρά περικλεισμένη δημιουργία ασταμάτητης δύναμης ελευθερωθεί πάνω στη Γη, ο le Flambeur, η Mieli και η Tawaddud θα βρεθούν μέσα σε μια σύγκρουση θεών και αθάνατων υπάρξεων που, αν κάνουν τις λάθος επιλογές, μπορεί να απειλήσει με τον αφανισμό τους ανθρώπους της Sirr και τον πλανήτη της ανθρωπότητας όπως ποτέ ξανά.

Μετά από ένα πρώτο βιβλίο που μας εισήγαγε στο φουτουριστικό Ηλιακό Σύστημά του, και στον ασυνήθιστο κόσμο της φαντασίας του και των επιστημονικών ιδεών του, ο Hannu Rajaniemi μας πηγαίνει στο The Fractal Prince μέσα στον πλανήτη της ανθρωπότητας: την Γη, και την πόλη της Sirr όπου οι κυβερνούσες οικογένειες των muhtasib - περιπλέκοντας με τους qarin τζίνι συντρόφους τους με ένα μοναδικό τρόπο που τους δίνει μια αρκετά διαφορετική οπτική του κόσμου - έχουν την ικανότητα μέσω των Μυστικών Ονομάτων να δημιουργούν Σφραγίδες που τους προστατεύουν από τον άγριο κώδικα που καταβροχθίζει τα πάντα στο πέρασμά του• οι mutalibun κυνηγοί θησαυρών που, με τον λαό τους να έχει ανοίξει ένα εμπόριο αγαθών με τους Sobornost μετά την Κραυγή της Οργής σε αντάλλαγμα για γκόγκολ ψυχές, έχουν γίνει οι πλουσιότεροι έμποροι• τα τζίνι μορφές σκέψεων τα οποία, σε αντίθεση με τα γκόγκολ - το λογισμικό των ανεβασμένων μυαλών - που ελέγχονται από τον αφέντη τους, μπορούν να κυριεύουν με τη βία οποιοδήποτε σώμα αν το επιθυμούν, και να κάνουν ανείπωτες ακολασίες• και τέλος οι Aun που, ζώντας μέσα από τις ιστορίες των λατρευτών τους, έχουν γίνει οι δικοί τους θεοί.

Όπως επίσης και μέσα στην ιστορία των Ιδρυτών, πηγαίνοντάς μας μέσα στις ζωές τους πριν από την Κατάρρευση μέχρι την έγερσή τους στην συλλογική δύναμη των Sobornost, δείχνοντάς μας το παρελθόν τους, τα πειράματά τους και τα λάθη τους, τις δοσοληψίες τους με τους πρωταγωνιστές, τον πόλεμό τους με τους zoku, και την ασταμάτητη πείνα τους για εξουσία - μια πλευρά που αποκαλύπτει κάτι πιο αθώο αλλά και κάτι πολύ πιο σκοτεινό.

Μια συνέχεια στην οποία, παίρνοντας έμπνευση αυτή τη φορά από την Μεσο-Ανατολίτικη συλλογή Χίλιες και μία νύχτες (ή αλλιώς γνωστή και ως Αραβικές νύχτες), χρησιμοποιώντας το ίδιο αφηγηματικό πλαίσιο, όπως επίσης και από το νοητικό πείραμα της Γάτας του Schrödinger, ο Rajaniemi φτιάχνει μέσα από την πολύπλοκη πρόζα του ένα απίστευτο μυθιστόρημα αλληλοσυνδεόμενων ιστοριών του παρελθόντος και του παρόντος, δίνοντάς του ένα πολύ πιο ονειρικό στοιχείο, και ταξιδεύοντάς μας σε μια περιπέτεια κλεφτών του σώματος, αριστοκρατών, κυνηγών, δράκων και τζίνι, αναμιγνύοντας τις επιστημονικές γνώσεις του με την φαντασία του και τις σκηνές δράσης, και δημιουργώντας και πάλι κάτι πολύ μοναδικό - και, παρ’ όλο που το βιβλίο μπορεί να μην γίνεται τόσο θεαματικό όσο το The Quantum Thief, είναι σίγουρο ότι δεν μπορούμε να αγνοήσουμε την μεγάλη φιλοδοξία του για κάτι νέο και διαφορετικό.

Εν συντομία, το The Fractal Prince είναι ένα φιλόδοξο δεύτερο βιβλίο στη σειρά του τζέντλεμαν κλέφτη Jean le Flambeur, με τον Hannu Rajaniemi να μας ταξιδεύει μέσα στη Γη και τον τόπο προέλευσης της ανθρωπότητας, σε μια περιπέτεια αλληλοσυνδεόμενων ιστοριών που αναμιγνύει μαζί κλέφτες του σώματος, αριστοκράτες και κυνηγούς με βαθιές επιστημονικές γνώσεις και υψηλή φαντασία, και δημιουργώντας κάτι υπέροχα μοναδικό.

[David Katzman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review is for Book 2, The Fractal Prince and Book 3, The Causal Angel. Books 2 and 3 were just as entertaining as Book 1, The Quantum Thief, although neither achieved the thematic heights of Book 1 (the premise of rewriting history that impressed me profoundly). Instead, we are treated to further adventures in this surreal far future world created by Rajaniemi. Rajaniemi continues to impress me with his ability to project into the extreme future what life might be like if consciousness could be digitized (I don't believe it can be, but it makes for fantastic and fantastical possibilities).

In these two books, Jean le Flambeur and his semi-partner Meili (the battle angel), continue on their quest to fulfill the ambiguous and relatively confusing mission they have been compelled to perform by the "pelligrini"--an original Founder of the Sobornost, one of the first beings to develop and command high-level code (or information) which controls much of the reality that makes up the existing society. The story ranges across the inner planets and moons of the solar system and the various spaceways connecting them. Although a great deal of it also occurs in diverse versions of "cyberspace." Jean and Meili are caught between numerous social/military/technological/political forces that include: the competing Founders, who each control nearly limitless versions of themselves in various physical and digitized forms; unleashed and nearly impossible to control "code" beings that have only modest identities but great appetites; as well as a civilization called the Zoku who have gamified society and turned every single action and choice the members make into a game move that rewards them for success. Zoku society is something like if you got points in life for making choices that benefit the goals of a group. All actions are "monetized" and banked for future benefits. Zoku society is in a sense a barter society as well, where actions that move the group toward certain goals are rewarded with bankable points and higher levels of access to powers. Individuals achieve personal power by helping the group.

Just as in Book 1, Rajaniemi has a poetic flare for inventing and describing technology. I'm far from "pro-technology," because for every benefit of technology to date, we have also produced great harm. Mass production and the great mobility of planes, trains and automobiles have wrought global warming. For every MRI system that could save lives, we have nuclear bombs that could destroy all life and civilization. We probably should have stopped at the toothbrush and the bicycle. And that's why some science fiction authors who seem to glorify technology, like Neal Stephenson, really disappoint me. They seem to posit technology as being able to solve all our problems. I'll call them Technoptimists.* Rajaiemi doesn't strike me as a technoptimist. His tremendous imagination has envisioned a far future that we may never reach, but he shows just as much struggle and despair in the future as the present. With beings of lesser power at the mercy of those of greater power, and those with power have their own agendas that have nothing to do with what will actually benefit the masses. On the other hand, as is often the case with epic adventures, highly clever single individuals have the power to save the day and make a huge difference. So I could level the charge against Rajaniemi that he seems to ascribe to the "great man" theory of history, rather than emphasizing the power of social movements. That said, the great man here is a woman, and it is a pretty damn good story. Most of us get a buzz out of someone being a hero and Rajaniemi delivers that, blended with enough cynicism that we don't feel like it's fake.

As long as you're a reader who is comfortable with technology so advanced it's like magic, and that is only directionally justified, then this is an exhilarating ride of a series. I found it hard to put down.

*I should trademark that!
​

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 Stars


The Fractal Prince is a bit of a letdown to me after having reread book one tQT by Hannu Rajaniemi. It is like the first piece an incredibly ambitious and complex piece of hard science fiction that will challenge you as a reader to keep things straight or even to simply understand what he is talking about. As I mentioned in my review of book one, there is a Wiki page that goes into great detail on the vocabulary, the world, the creatures, and of course the science behind the story of The Quantum Thief.



The series is a sci-fi nerds dream…It has awesome spaceships, quantum science, cool new species, and a high tech dreamscape that will leave your imagination in awe. Hannu Rajaniemi does not hold back, he does not hold your hand, and he surely does not try to explain every detail behind is incredible world.



“Quantum mechanics claims that there is no definite cat in the box, only a ghost, a superposition of a live cat and a dead cat. That is, until we open it and look. A measurement will collapse the system into one state or the other. So goes Schrödinger’s thought experiment.
It is completely wrong, of course. A cat is a macroscopic system, and there is no mysterious intervention by a magical observer needed to make it live or die: just its interaction with the rest of the Universe, a phenomenon called decoherence, provides the collapse into one macrostate. But in the microscopic world – for qubits, quantum-mechanical equivalents of ones and zeroes – the Schrödinger’s cat is real.”



The Fractal Prince is a story about stories. The whole heist is centered on stories being told to our heroes. The novel unfolds, new characters arise, backstories are filled in, and the plot moves forward, pretty much all through the telling of stories. This was a major change from book one that I was not totally enamored with. Sure, they are interesting and well done, but I felt that I lost touch with our main hero Jean as well as the other side characters.



The disconnect with our protagonist really is not Rajaniemi’s fault as it happens that our hero is a skin changer. Jean de Flambeur is tough to recognize in this book. Is actions are different, his attitude is different, and of course so is his face. The only character that I really felt connected with, and my understanding of her deepend was with that of Perhonen, a spaceship.



Rajaniemi is a brilliant writer with a serious future ahead of him as a science fiction writer.



“The words swirl. The paper and the letters bulge out, form the shape of a hand, fingers of black and white, reaching out from the book.
The dust thing coughs and whispers, and something brushes Matjek’s shoulder, tickling sharply. He grabs the hand as hard as he can, and the razor edges of the word-fingers cut his palm. But he holds on, and the hand pulls him in, into the suddenly vast sea of language in front of him. The words roll over him like—
—waves, a gentle, teasing pull and push of cold foam around his bare feet. A warm evening sun above, a beach of white sand like a smile.
‘For a while there, I thought you weren’t going to make it,’ the thief says. He holds Matjek’s hand in a warm, tight grip, a slight man in shorts and a white shirt, eyes hidden behind sunglasses, blue like the book of nights.”



I loved the first book The Quantum Thief, I enjoyed book two The Fractal Prince, and I can easily give this series my highest recommendations to the science fiction reader…

[Holly (The GrimDragon) · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Mieli has been acting strangely. She is not the life of the party at the best of times, but she has been even quieter than usual during the slow weeks of our journey from Mars..”

The Fractal Prince is the follow-up to The Quantum Thief in the Jean le Flambeur series by Hannu Rajaniemi.

I’m not sure what type of actual monster is perhaps reading this review without having already read the first book in this glorious series, but if that happens to be you.. I can’t guarantee that there won’t be spoilers. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!

“The good thing is, no one will ever die again. The bad thing is, everyone will want to.”

The Fractal Prince picks up immediately following the events in The Quantum Thief. The charming thief Jean le Flambeur owes a great deal to Mieli, the winged badass space warrior & her precious spider-like ship, Perhonen. Flambeur had been imprisoned in the Dilemma Prisons, a virtual simulation that forces the prisoner to confront not only other criminals, but often various versions of themselves. And by confront, I mean usually have to fucking KILL THEMSELVES OVER & OVER LIKE AN EVEN MORE DERANGED GROUNDHOG DAY! It’s an endless game of attempting to rehabilitate (torture) the inmate in a Realmspace in the hope that they will somehow become a decent person. Mieli frees Jean so that he can retrieve his Very Important Memories™ from the Oubliette, which is a moving city above Mars, in order to help her mysterious patron Pellegrini steal something significant as well.

Whereas The Quantum Thief took place primarily on Oubliette, The Fractal Prince is located on war-torn Earth. Jean still doesn’t remember much & Mieli is continuing to look for her lost lover, Sydän.

Oof. I’ve barely even scratched the surface of the complexities here! There are stories within stories within stories. It’s philosophical & atmospheric & bonkers af!

Did I mention that Rajaniemi has a Ph.D in string theory? Because he does. And hot damn is it evident throughout this series! However, he’s somehow able to weave math & science with readability, poetry & gut-wrenching emotion in this explosively brilliant way. It’s impressive as fuck!

Stolen memories, posthumans, jinni, gods, a butterfly beast, serpent-like monsters, Dragons (with a capital “D” that eat.. well, I’ll let you discover what it is that they eat!)

The Fractal Prince is a wild ride, upping the stakes for the characters in delightfully intriguing ways!

[Tudor Ciocarlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hannu Rajaniemi had managed to do something unique in SF: to write a hard-SF novel in a far-future, post-human, post-singularity world. No other SF writer has had the courage to immerse the science, the narrative and the prose, so deep in the far future. Adam Roberts was right in saying that "there's nothing quite like it in contemporary SF". It's not an easy book, but this is science-fiction at its best and an incredible piece of literature in general.

[Estelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

So glad I reread this. There are still many things I couldn't quite understand, but this time I really enjoyed the ride and, as in The Quantum Thief, some concepts and the level of creativity really took my breath away.
This time, I'm ready for the final book!

[Milo · Rating 5 out of 5]

“An awesome, epic hard-sci-fi follow up to The Quantum Thief makes sure that The Fractal Prince was one of my favourite books of 2012.” ~The Founding Fields


The Fractal Prince was the last book that I finished in 2012, and it was a great year to end my reading on. As The Quantum Thief was one of my favourite novels of 2011, I seized the chance to read a copy of The Fractal Prince and I am grateful for Tor for sending me a copy to review – I just couldn’t put this book down, making it two out of two for Hannu Rajanemi leaving me wondering where he’s going to leave us with the final novel in the trilogy.

This was superb stuff, and if you loved the first book as much as I did, then you’ll find The Fractal Prince to be one of your favourite novels of 2012 as well.

“The good thing is, no one will ever die again. The bad thing is, everyone will want to.”

A physicist receives a mysterious paper. The ideas in it are far, far ahead of current thinking and quite, quite terrifying. In a city of “fast ones,” shadow players, and jinni, two sisters contemplate a revolution.
And on the edges of reality a thief, helped by a sardonic ship, is trying to break into a Schrödinger box for his patron. In the box is his freedom. Or not.

Jean de Flambeur is back. And he’s running out of time.

In Hannu Rajaniemi’s sparkling follow-up to the critically acclaimed international sensation The Quantum Thief, he returns to his awe-inspiring vision of the universe…and we discover what the future held for Earth.

This novel is a direct continuation of The Quantum Thief utilizing a similar tone to the first novel in the trilogy. The book is among the hardest of the hard sci-fi novels that I’ve read, up there with the likes of Iain M. Banks and Peter F. Hamilton. Whilst The Fractal Prince may not be as long as the Peter F. Hamilton novel that I am currently reading, The Reality Dysfunction, It doesn’t have to be. I loved Rajaniemi’s narrative, prose and setting – and although it’s one of the more weird novels that I’ve read recently, it also happens to be one of the best. SFX describe this book as “Something Strange this way comes,” and I think that just about sums it up. This is certainly not a book or indeed, a series – that you’d give to someone reading their first hard sci-fi novel. For those of you who are at all interested in literary sci-fi however, The Fractal Prince and its predecessor, The Quantum Thief, are for you.

Read the Rest of the Review: http://thefoundingfields.com/2013/01/....

[Ben Thurley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Rajaniemi's two novels, this and his earlier, The Quantum Thief teeter on the edge of greatness, almost but not quite living up to their promise. They are full of big ideas, a richly imagined future where new ways of being human play out across the solar system. He is uncompromising in chiselling exposition away, and his language often achieves an elliptical kind of lyricism, even when describing the sharp edges of some technological horror. Although, to my mind, it equally often seemed just clunky.

As for the plot. In The Fractal Prince, charming rogue, Jean le Flambeur returns, along with his Oortian captor/liberator Mieli and her sentient ship, Perhonen. This time to break into the mind of a living god to,... well, do what exactly? And why? I'm not sure.

Rajaniemi builds a rich and intriguing mythos in hints and fragments, with much assumed and very little spelled out. His is a universe of vast and all-encompassing plots enacted by violently opposed but viciously opaque groups, the Founders, the zoku, the Sobornost.

The stories within stories structure of this novel is also quite lovely, and links in to aspects of the novel's plot. Some stories, it turns out, transmuted through technology, allow people to write themselves into the minds of others.

Sadly, though, the techno-wizardry, the lack of any great sense of progression in the plot, the massive, godlike powers of (some of) the protagonists, along with the unfathomable motivations of the shadowy post-human cabals at work behind the scenes to shape their universe in their own image, rather dulls the drama. A little more storytelling on the human-scale would have done wonders.

Oh, and you really need to have read The Quantum Thief before embarking on The Fractal Prince. In a strange asymmetry, I can't promise that reading the earlier novel will help this one make more sense; but I can guarantee that it will make less sense without it.

[J.j. Metsavana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bobverse edasijõudnutele ehk virtuaalsed isiksuste koopiad on muutunud inimkonna igapäevaseks koostisosaks. Jupiter on mingis singulaarsusõnnetuses täielikult hävinud ning maailma valitsevad kaks võimast klanni - zokud ja Sobornost. Zokud on digitaliseerunud endised MMO mängurid, kes lingivad endi teadvusi kokku üle kvantpaaride ning Sobornost on kamp Fedorovismi kummardajatest digitaalseid mõistusi, kes on samuti loonud endast miljoneid virtuaalseid koopiaid (neid kutsutakse gogoliteks) ning terve hulga erinevat AI ründevara. Zokud arendavad oma keerukat liitreaalsuse ühiskonda marsil ja Sobernost möllab kosmoses, omades seal planeetide suurusi arvuteid. Nende vahel on juba toimunud suur protokollisõja nimeline konflikt ning vastasseis visiseb edasi. Keskseks tegelaseks on kõigis kvantvarga romaanides Jean le Flambeuriga, kes on päikesüsteemi kõige kõver häkker. Ahjaa, kuskil seal on ka maa, mis tundub olevat suuremalt jaolt digitaalseid hauakambreid täis kõrb ning kus möllavad isepaljunevad programmid ja metsikud nanomasinad.

Kui esimene teos kvantvaras räägib zokude klannist, mis on muarust kergemini mõistetav kamp, siis teine romaan Fraktaaliprints on Sobernostist, mis on hulga segasem ja hullumeelsem. Lisaks Flameurile on siin teiseks peategelaseks maa printsess Tawaddud ning varguse objektiks on seekord ühe Sobernosti kõige tähtsama mehe noorusaegne koopia.

Minuarvates loob Rajaniemi väga kaugele arenenud digiühiskonnast lahedalt kirju ja usutava pildi. Kogu see gogolitest, korporatsioonidest, singulaarsete jumalatest, hiidteemantitest ehitatud linnadest, planeedisuurustest arvutifarmidest ning ümber päikese tiirlevatest kvantruuteritest koosnev keskkond tundub üheaegselt nii ülisegane kui ka loogiline. Ilmselt tunduks meie maailma kirjeldus mõnele 18-19 sajandi inimesele sama jabur. Praegusele teadusele endiselt kättesaamatu aga raamatu tegelastele juba antiikne tehnoloogia põimub moondunud popukultuuri, elustatud muinasjuttude või täiesti arusaamatute singulaarsete mõistuste looduga ning Rajaniemi komme mitte midagi seletada ei tee kogu selle kompoti mõistmist just lihtsamaks. Samas saan ka aru, et kui ta püüaks kõike selgitada siis ta ilmselt jääkski seda tegema ja raamatud oleksid mitte kolmsada vaid kolm tuhat lehekülge. Lisaks saab lugeja kannatlikus pidevalt, uute põnevate ideede ja konseptsioonide näol premeeritud. Mulle meeldib väga, kui ulmeautorid üritavad piiluda ennustamatu singulaarsuspunkti taha ja mõelda, kuidas tuleviku inimeste igapäevane elu võiks olla selles meile ettekujutlematus maailmas. Seega ei saa ma ka sellele Rajaniemi romaanile kuidagi alla maksimumhinde anda.

[Chris Berko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy F'ing S, this series is incredible. This one though was a little bit darker than the first one. The Quantum Thief was kind of like those Oceans movies with Clooney only if they were directed by Christopher Nolan. It was a fun, heist/caper novel set in a unbelievably imaginative post-singularity future. This second novel does not have as much humor as the first one and the actions and behaviors of the characters carries a much darker influence. The action remains as original and visual as a book can get and the whole story within a story layered presentation added a measure of complexity and ingenuity to the way the first book was structured. A story this dense and esoteric in parts requires a certain amount of trust in the author to bring everything together into a cohesive whole, and after only two books that I have read by him I can say this author has earned my trust. While I do have to reread certain parts in order to fully grasp what is going on because of how different all this is from anything else, I never feel cheated or think that the author does not really know where he is going or that some things will be left unanswered. That kind of trust is important to me and why I have felt underwhelmed at the end of other ambitiously begun books that by the conclusion drown under the weight of their own complexity or incoherence. This shit, to me, is as good as it gets and I am ravenously craving more like it.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Fractal Prince by Hannu Rajaniemi. Sequel to The Quantum Thief.
A/A+. May be the best "middle book" in the history of science fiction?

I was late reading The Quantum Thief, waiting for the paperback after reading some rather forbidding reviews. And it was a slow-starting, not especially reader-friendly book -- hey, it was his first novel -- even though I ended up liking it a lot.

The Fractal Prince resolves most of those writing-craft issues, and crackles along, though it's certainly not a page-turner. Best read with deliberate speed, I think, with a reread not too far down the line.

The author's pal Charlie Stross supplied a wonderful cover blurb:
"Stupefyingly entertaining, like a heist movie for post-singularity, AI-boosted string theorists from beyond spacetime." Not only is this accurate, but a fair pre-read test -- if you find the blurb mystifying, so will be the novel. And I certainly wouldn't recommend starting here (though some readers apparently have).

A third book is promised. I'll be reading it.

A good published review, by Niall Alexander:
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/09/a-qu...

[charlotte, · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rep: lesbian mc

[Ira Nayman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The science fiction book club I attend looked at Karl Schroeder’s Lady of Mazes one month. One of the members stated that he didn’t much care for post-Singularity novels because there really wasn’t any way of predicting what would happen after all matter in the solar system or galaxy became computation. That, on the other hand, is exactly why I love those stories, as I was reminded by reading Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Fractal Prince, the awesome sequel to his awesome The Quantum Thief.

When I experience a work of art, I am looking for surprise and delight. Especially when it comes to reading a novel, which requires a fairly substantial commitment of time, I want to enjoy the experience, I want it to be fun. Any reasonably good writer should be able to take the freedom inherent in the concept of the Singularity and create a dazzling world with unique situations and imaginative imagery. Rajaniemi (like Schroeder) is much better than reasonably good, so I cannot help but adore his work.

Hard science fiction fans are likely, like my book club compadre, to object; I think they might agree that these books are better placed in the category of “science fantasy” (although, pace, Arthur C. Clarke, I think a lot of popular science fiction can be categorized that way). There are precedents for post-Singularity novels (Greg Egan’s Permutation City comes to mind, as does Michael Moorcock’s Dancers at the End of Time trilogy). However, for me, the blueprint of these books is Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll, containing, as they do, a bizarre world with its own strange internal logic.

But, honestly, comfortable literary cubbyholes don’t interest me; virtuoso displays of artistic imagination do. And, The Fractal Prince delivers. (I would give the book five stars on its merits, but the edition I have had a regrettable number of words missing or repeated, so I knocked it down to four.)

[Clay Kallam · Rating 2 out of 5]

According to the blurb on the book jacket, Hannu Rajaniemi is a Finn transplanted to Scotland who directs a think tank that helps businesses by using higher math.

If you think that’s a little confusing, try reading his two books, “The Quantum Thief” and “The Fractal Prince” (Tor, $25.99, 297 pages). Set a few hundred years down the road, the connected books (absolutely read “The Quantum Thief” first) take place in a world where virtual realities are pretty much indistinguishable from the real thing, where individuals clone themselves with ease (and sometimes clone only part of themselves to do specific, boring tasks), and where powers are loose in the Solar System that are capable of destroying Earth, and even Jupiter.

Now toss in multiple points of view, a plot so complex I’m still trying to figure it out and lots of action, and you have two books that require pretty much total concentration. I confess I couldn’t really give “The Quantum Thief” and “The Fractal Prince” the devotion necessary to actually understand what was happening (beyond the broadest plot points), but I did make it through one-and-a-half of the books before terminal frustration set in.

And then the conclusion left me flat, so all in all even though much of the ride was fun, I’m not sure it was really worth the price of admission.