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Feb 16, 2011

Joel rated it:

Charles Stross decided it would be a good idea to write Halting State entirely in second person. I briefly toyed with doing the same for my review, but then I remembered that I already did that, and it wasn't that amusing.

Then I thought maybe I would do the whole thing in code like a l33t haXor, which would have been appropriate since this book finds it the height of amusement to throw around with-it language like "n00b" and "pwned."

Then I realized that it More...

16 comments like (20 people liked it)

Nov 17, 2011

Simeon rated it:

The list of notable books written in second person is only slightly longer than the list of notable books written solely to criticize them.

Halting State has a cool premise. I mean, aside from the fact that it was dated by the time it came out (goggles, really? That's your immersion technology. I mean, we've gotten to the point where we can read your mind. But hey, if you wanna strap a small TV to your face instead, whatever.)

Let's ignore specifics about Halting State for More...

5 comments like (10 people liked it)

Aug 02, 2008

Kristin rated it:

This was a delight to read. The story is set in independent Scotland in 2018. Everyone has direct and constant access to the web through their glasses and walk around in a constant twitch as they hammer away on virtual keyboards. Hayek Associates, a small start-up gaming company, has discovered their software has been infiltrated and the virtual bank they oversee has been robbed by a band of orcs and a dragon. Sergeant Sue Smith is first on this bewildering crime “scene”. Next to come along More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Aug 21, 2011

Guy rated it:

Just when you think you've read everything worth reading and that there's nothing new under the sun, just when you are feeling really jaded, that's when books like this one (and Michael Flynn's "January Dancer", and Peter Watts' "Blindsight") come along and remind you why you love science fiction and fantasy.

Set in the near future, using technology that either exists already or is on the drawing board now, Stross creates a world that is at the same time almost ali More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 22, 2008

Sandi rated it:

"Halting State" by Charles Stross was the last book on my 2008 Hugo Nominees List. While I still think "Brasyl" by Ian McDonald should have won instead of "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" by Michael Chabon, I do think this comes in a very, very close second.

I was pleasantly surprised by "Halting State". I read "Accelerando" by the same author last year and absolutely loathed it. "Halting State" really grabbed me and I read More...

4 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 19, 2012

Seth rated it:

This book has several interesting (and unusual) attributes. Overall it's a fun read in the vein of Pat Cadigan's Synners, about hackers and suits working together to handle a threat to technology society has evolved to assume. Like Synners it throws you into the world head-first without explaining names, acronyms, slang, or the numerous in-jokes; unlike Synners it focuses on the espionage story and leaves the sociological theorizing out.

The plot revolves around a multi-million-dollar More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 30, 2007

Jenne rated it:

I'd really like to give this three and a half stars. It was pretty cute, and the idea of the real-life spy game was neat.

As many others have noted, Stross has a fondness for enormous chunks of exposition, but I guess it doesn't bother me as much. I like learning about stuff, as long as it's interesting stuff.

I'm taking off points for:
--intermittent use of annoying Scottish dialect
--constantly referring to an accountant as a "librarian" because she's. More...

8 comments like (3 people liked it)

May 26, 2008

Tricia rated it:

Another from my list of books in second person. I found it extremely hard to get into this at first. The second person present perspective plus the head jumping into different characters felt very awkward, and I really wasn't at all sure where the story was going, so I was reluctant to dive in. About a third of the way through, I finally grokked where it was trying to go and I leapt in, reading the rest of the book at a faster pace and really enjoying the characters. It's rare in a book with mul More...

3 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 31, 2007

Janet rated it:

Okay plot, although Stross thinks he's being more innovative than he really is. The idea of people thinking they're playing war games, only to find out it's real, has been done many times. (Ender's Game for one, and lots of movies from the 1980's). The main characters appealing, but undeveloped. Also, I know I'm fighting a losing battle here, but the word "librarian" describes a profession. It does not mean nerdy, intellectual, sexually repressed, insecure, spinsters! I hate to sma More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 15, 2008

Jason rated it:

(My full review of this book is much longer than GoodReads' word-count limitations. Find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of science-fiction (or SF), and that one of the writers of the newest generation that I keep up with is master mind-screwer-upper Charles Stross, a multiple Hugo-nominated "writer's writer" who is greatly admired by the precise fellow writers who are his Hugo compet More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 24, 2008

Daniel rated it:

The first buzzwords I heard about this book were along the lines of "bank heist", "MMOs", and "marauding band of orcs." Aha, I thought, here's an interesting premise: "Programmers of a World of Warcraft-like MMO soup-up the AI on a bunch of NPC orcs to make them more of a challenge for their players. But they make the orcs too smart: Using unwitting agents in real-life (aka 'meatspace'), the orcs perpetrate a bank heist in our world, planning to use their loot More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 13, 2010

Robert rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 10, 2008

Mark rated it:

Really nice near future novel from Stross. Explores how virtual worlds will develop and in particular blur with the real world to provide augmented reality.

The layered plot is also well formed with convincing characterisation and a fast pace that keeps you reading. A good solid light read, that unfortunately will probably date quite quickly.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 28, 2009

Rob rated it:

A terrific science fiction novel, this is a crime story in which virtual reality overflows into reality. This should be especially entertaining for players of role-playing games, as the references are numerous and frequently funny. Not that you need to play much to get a lot of the jokes; I am the non-gamer in my family, but exposure to the basics was enough.

The blurb from the back cover that convinced me to buy this:

"A daring bank robbery has taken place... The prim More...

1 comment like

Jan 08, 2009

Bill rated it:

I picked up this book in the middle of reading 2666, mostly to have something lighter to read on my holiday cross-country plane rides. It fulfilled those expectations very well.

Halting State is a fun near-future detective novel that focuses on a large robbery. The twist is that the robbery happens online, to a virtual bank. What starts out as a straightforward detective story has some very satisfying second act twists that bring the narrative out a bit to include a lot of interest More...

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Jan 07, 2009

Brownbetty added it

Every once in a while I get the idea I'm not reading brainy enough SF, and that all the other SF readers will sneer at me for not reading enough Hugo winners. Halting State hasn't won a Hugo, but it says "Hugo Award-winning author of" on the front, so it probably count for half points.

Sue Smith is a tough, no-nonsense cop who takes occasional flack for being the only out lesbian in her department. And that was the last time the book gave me something I liked.

T More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 15, 2012

Jay rated it:

You wonder why the author chose to write this book in second person PoV, when that writing mode is traditionally reserved for Choose Your own Adventure books and that odd shade of pornography where the camera is strapped to the pilot's head, all grunting into the camera-mounted mic and whatnot.

Then you the wonder why the author chose to write this book in second person PoV and include MULTIPLE CHARACTER POINTS OF VIEW.

You flail around for a few chapters, trying to wrap y More...

7 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 20, 2011

Andrew rated it:

An entire novel written in the second person might put off a lot of potential readers, and in this case just to make it more difficult to follow there are three main protagonists all of whom are referred to as ‘you’. However by writing in this way the author has very cleverly written in a style that both mimics the subject of his plot (on-line gaming) and might appeal to his target readership (gamers).

Back when most on-line games were text-driven they were nearly all second-person, a More...

0 comments like

Aug 16, 2011

Steven rated it:

What a fascinating book this was!

As a quick summary, this is a near-future electronic crime mystery more than a scifi novel, but it's still a blast to read. There's distributed computing, cryptography, games that are effectively MMORPGs, and Alternate Reality Games thrown in the mix. I'm actually employed in the games industry, so I know a lot of the buzzwords used here, but even so I was looking up stuff on wikipedia to gain a little bit of background on the topics Stross brings up.
More...

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Aug 10, 2011

Mjhancock rated it:

A team of orcs breaking into a virtual bank and run off with... well, everything. And it's up to a Scottish police officer, a forensic accountant, and a computer programmer to get to the bottom of it. As a book taking place in the "near" future (2018, when the book was originally published in 2007), Halting State is amazingly prescient, and has the advantage of appearing to be one of the more plausible futures I've read in sci-fi in a long time. The big changes are those that seem i More...

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Aug 06, 2011

William Thomas rated it:

What in the hell did I just read? Seriously, what was that?

When I was 14 I read Naked Lunch and was left scratching my head. I loved it but didn't understand it. I read it again later in college and understood that there was very little to understand. It was poetry on the page. It was what it was and there really wasn't a whole lot beneath it's surface. So I learned to take it at face value and loved it even more.

And I felt that way again with this book, only without the lov More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 01, 2011

Michael rated it:

Choc-full of bright ideas on the uses and pervasity of computer technology in the near-future this book should come with a warning: Do Not Approach Without a Masters or Passionate Interest in a Relevant Discipline. Even with my background as a former computer software engineer I sometimes struggled with the technobabble that whizzed by yet was entirely necessary to understand to comprehend the plot. Unfortunately the plot, while interesting as a rough outline, was quite tiresome in the practic More...

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Jul 19, 2011

Steve is currently reading it

You see words typed in a review box. They may be something nice or not. You won't know until the person writing the review finishes the book, if they can. You notice that it is very difficult to get into a story or review when it is written in second person.

Your first instinct is to stop reading because you have a gut wrenching feeling that the novel is going to turn into a 300 page math problem that will end with a question. You open the book. You see the words:

"Yo More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 06, 2011

Julian rated it:

Confession time: I do not admire Charles Stross' writing. Since his first book Singularity Sky he has followed a simple model. There is a brilliant start, with fine ideas and interesting milieu, with not so interesting characters (women are particularly unconvincing). Then there is a reasonably good initial development of the plot, albeit with greater use of cliche than one would like, and with a few more ideas thrown in to keep things interesting. Then there is a sudden realisation that he More...

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Dec 29, 2010

Kathleen rated it:

I enjoyed reading Accelerando so I thought I'd check out this earlier title and I think I liked it even better. The book is set in Scotland in the near future, where infospace/augmented reality is visually overlaid onto the real world via custom eyewear. Actual paper money is a quaint oddity, RFID-tagged clothing programs the washing machines, and cars are very rarely driven by actual drivers.

The story begins with a "bank robbery" in an online game called Avalon Four, whe More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 27, 2010

Stacy rated it:

Not as egregious as some of the other books we've read in our SciFi Book Club. And when I say egregious, I mean in one particular aspect that I personally find lamentably endemic in SciFi books. It seems that there are instances in many books of the genre, wherein the author becomes so wrapped up in the world he's created that he reverts to his own slick lingo to dazzle the reader, rather that to genuinely bring the reader along the path of the story being told. Oftentimes, this is also used More...

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Aug 18, 2010

Paul rated it:

This near-future story is about a bank robbery that exposes a whole lot more.

In Edinburgh, Scotland of the year 2018, a high-tech company called Hayek Associates suffers a bank robbery. A senior officer of the firm panics, and calls the local police, instead of taking care of things internally. Things get weird when Sergeant Sue Smith is told that the robbery took place inside a virtual reality games called Avalon Four. Forgetting for a moment that this is supposed to be impossible, More...

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Jul 30, 2010

Norman rated it:

Halting State by Charles Stross is a tour de force melding of police procedural and cyberpunk. In the year 2018, Sergeant Sue Smith of the Edinburgh constabulary is called to investigate a virtual robbery in an online game space by a band of orcs at a dot-com startup company. Jack Reed, a computer expert, and Elaine Barnaby, an insurance investigator, are quickly called in to spearhead the insurance company’s investigation. They soon realize that there is more than meets the eye, and are caug More...

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Apr 05, 2009

CD rated it:

I didn't give this book 5 stars because it took me quite a while to get into it. I bought it 9 months ago and read a couple of chapters and put it down and didn't pick it up again until just this month when I didn't have anything to read in the house. So, I warn you, the beginning is slow, confusing and a bit all over the place. However, having just finished it in a weekend, I found that once you get past page 50, it picks up to a furious pace and is utterly fascinating.

The over More...

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Feb 05, 2009

Andrew rated it:

This book is set up in a daunting manner. The narrative switches between three different points of view, and each of them is told in the second person, present tense. For example: "You check out your shoulder in the bathroom mirror. That's quite some bruise Mike landed on you at the club." Between the somewhat disorienting second-person approach and the constantly shifting viewpoints, "Halting State" can be a challenging book to engage with. This is leaving aside the rather t More...

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