The Fractal Prince (Jean le Flambeur #2)

by Hannu Rajaniemi

It feels like trying to juggle eight-side Rubik’s cubes while trying to solve them at the same time. And every time I drop one, God kills a billion kittens.

It is surprisingly difficult to win a staring contest with a butterfly, even when you are wearing the face of the greatest warlord in the Solar System. So in the end, I look away.

Perhaps she should go, said the part of her that was Zaybak. I will never leave him, said the part that was Tawaddud. Or perhaps it was the other way around.

a laser beam from orbit is feeding power to their q-dot bubble shield that is currently pretending to be a hyperdense element at the far, far end of the periodic table.

This was a tough one, for many reasons.