El Ladrón Cuántico (2010)

Jean le Flambeur is in the middle of a Prison, caught in never-ending cycles of the Prisoner's Dilemma when he is broken out. But this only lands him in a world where he has to rediscover his own secrets that he's hidden in a new type of prison. I don't think I did this book justice. Since I'm stingier with my time nowadays, I didn't slow down to consider all aspects of this book. I flew right past the techno-jumbo gizmo words and the odd-sounding-realistic phrases that meant something and just depended solely on context clues. If I didn't understand, whatever, I kept going. And let me tell you, I didn't understand a lot of it. If you look at all the reviews of this book, you'll see phrases like "not for casual scifi readers" "jammed pack with ideas" "hurts my brain". I think all of those phrases tend towards being true. This is the type of book that flings you into a new galaxy and expects you to already know everything. The slang, the technology, the different races and species, the rituals and customs of those species, everything. I am no slouch of a reader, but it was like reading through mud. Nothing is clear.And you see? I spend so much time on this review talking about how much I struggled through phrases and deducing my own thing that I can barely talk about the plot or the characters. That's a bit of how I felt reading the book too. I had to deal with learning/deducing what the hell was even going on that sometimes the plot lines get a bit jumbled and twisted and where the hell did that plot line go??? Essentially, I very much like Jean le Flambeur. His offhanded personality sets his firmly in the "charming rascal" category. The whole plot of him attempting to discover the mystery was... interesting. I just don't really know how to review this book, so I'll just list some points that stood out. - I appreciated that Rajaniemi put in a full romantic plot line with ups and downs despite it not even the secondary show (more like the sixth minor plot)- the zoku population is basically otakus and gamers. That's just hilarious. - I loved the chocolate mystery- half of this book takes place is some sort of brain-neuro-pathway-other-plane-of-existence, which makes it difficult to follow where we are in- the gevulot is absolutely fascinating. I think I would love to be able to control privacy amounts. And the idea of a gevulot contract is crazy! You can basically make any conversation a hidden confession with no strings attached. Fascinating. - the usage of Time as currency is not fully fleshed out, but absolutely intriguing. Can no one use debt or credit? Bankruptcy means Quiet? - heritage of Isidore was not really explained, so that was not appreciated- climax was explosive with the revelation of the memory palaces and the nine Watches, but I disliked it because it didn't have enough relation to the rest of the book - I was not surprised by the revelation of the original motivation for Oubliette because of its very name, for goodness sake. That bullet point list doesn't even cover half of the ideas crammed into this book. By the end of the book, you just feel like you've been a rollercoaster ride that went so fast you had to close your eyes against the whipping wind for 50% of the time, so you're not exactly sure where you went or if you saw anything, but dang that was a hell of a ride. Three stars and major props to the author for being able to pull something like this off.

Delightful! I wanted to give it a 4.5, but I rounded up bc its a debut.