Customer Reviews
Simply awesome 
2008-08-20
best book about the coming future and what physical and digital systems will look like and how we will interact with them
Read this book!!
Satirical Gimmicks didn't save it 
2008-08-14
The second person perspective is annoying and distracting at the best of times and completely ruins the narrative at others. It was an attempt to bring back the 1st and 2nd generations of role-playing video games when they game told you what you were doing, and it annoyed me then too. The most interesting chapter is the bit about the digital heist. The rest of the book seemed to go on and on about which character done it. The chapter character switches made it impossible for me to care one way or another about any of the characters. Skip this one. There is far better sci-fi satire/cyber-punk.
A really pleasant surprise 2008-07-26
I encountered to this book in the course of an hour-long hunt through cross-references ("people who bought this book also bought..."), best-seller lists, etc. looking for something new and good in the vein of William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, etc. - a work by an author who really gets how the present works and the near future is likely to work, and can be truly, literarily creative with it. I ordered it expecting something decent, and found that I had received a real gem. Not only is the tech background super-solid (it helps if you're a sysadmin, but if not, no worries), but the writing is great - the dialog and internal monologues are as sardonic and humorous as, say, Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaason, or John Sandford. Finally, dear God, it's set in Scotland and reads like Ian Rankin tartan noir. What's not to like?
Entertaining; 3.5 Stars 
2008-07-26
An enjoyable and moderately satirical novel set in the near future. Stross' theme is the penetration of information technology into everyday life, so this book is set in future Scotland where there is constant monitoring of daily life, where police have immediate access to enormous databases, and where the lines between virtual reality and conventional reality are increasingly blurred. Stross presents a fairly clever plot which is largely a traditional espionage thriller adapted cleverly to a world of virtual reality, role playing games, and information technology espionage. Like several of Stross' books, the reworking of a traditional genre device is done very well and provides an opportunity for some satire. Characterization and writing are competent, as usual.
Fun and Games 
2008-07-24
Here's a book that's great fun. It's not one of the great books, but I can't picture a science fiction fan that won't enjoy it.
Like several of Stross' books it blends technology, expanded into the future, and economics. In this case it is computer gaming on a mega scale, tied into a rather classic genre mystery novel. Quite simply, a theft takes place in a game, and the heroes set out to find out who-done-it. There is a pleasant recognition that this society may be the way the world's heading.
Stross often seems to try to set himself a literary task in his writing, and this time it's telling the story from the second person point of view of three different individuals whose lives become linked by the crime. What happens is predictable but the nerd in us will love the way he intertwines the story with technical aspects of on-line gaming (and other computer technology) carried out to the ultimate degree. Moreover, each of three main characters is likable so that we root for them right from the beginning. By rotating between the points of view of these characters the author is able to hold to hold back critical information for a little while, and then, again and again, give us the burst of pleasure that comes from recognizing what's going on.
Along the way Stross gets to satirize many aspects of society from the way policepersons think to the long term consequences of a united (and divided) Europe. At the same time, we recognize that many aspects of human behavior, like organizational politics, never seem to change.
Have some fun. Read "Halting State".
Remarkable, possibly prophetic 2008-07-09
In the year 2018, Sergeant Sue Smith of the Edinburgh constabulary is called in on a special case. A daring bank robbery has taken place at Hayek Associates, a dot-com startup company that's just been floated on the London stock exchange. The suspects are a band of marauding orcs, with a dragon in tow for fire support, and the bank is located within the virtual reality land of Avalon Four. For Smith, the investigation seems pointless. But she soon realizes that the virtual world may have a devastating effect in the real one-and that someone is about to launch an attack upon both...
You repeatedly find yourself wondering if you should bother finishing the book. 2008-07-08
Like so much of Stross' work, HALTING STATE alternates between excitingly imaginative and annoyingly ... well, just plain annoying.
As everyone else has noted, HALTING STATE is a sort of crime/suspense novel in which our three heroes must somehow solve a mystery that initially seems silly and trivial yet becomes deeper and more serious with every chapter ... or every fifth chapter, anyway.
The story unfolds through alternation between three protagonists -- Jack the hacker, Elaine the forensic accountant, and Sue the cop. This is done through chapters written in the second person (e.g., "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike"), which, at least formally, places the reader in each of the characters' roles, as if the book itself were a type of role-playing game (RPG), like the RPG in which the focal crime takes place.
The most innovative and enjoyable aspect of the novel is the notion that, in the near future, life will become like a chaotic collision of multiple RPGs, each with its own version of reality. Elaine the accountant shuttles between virtual meetings with her co-workers and "facials" (face-to-face meetings) but she also dips into the SPIES RPG and other alternate realities, often moving from one to the other with little boundary between. It's not that "life is a but a game" is a new idea, but it's never been done before (to my knowledge) with MMORPGs in as a model.
What's annoying about the novel are the second person storytelling, which makes the storytelling awkward without adding anything, the relatively slow plot development that results from the frequent switches in point-of-view (it's all second-person, but the persons differ), the jokey hacker references (which include the "twisty little passages" bit above, referring to the original text "Adventure" game that many of us played in the 1970s and 1980s), Sue's thick Scottish dialect (which Ian MacLeod has handled much better in some of his novels), and the cutesy awkwardness with which he handles most of his female characters. The ridiculousness of the (don't ask) spy subplot (not the computer security issues, but the politics) isn't really annoying, even if it is disappointing.
I didn't get hooked until about halfway through the book. I DID get hooked, however, and I DO recommend finishing the book even if you have difficulty slogging through the first ten or so chapters. Stuff does happen, the mystery becomes more interesting, and while I can't say whether or not the nerd gets the (sort of) babe, the romantic byplay adds some spice to the mix.
You probably want something more consistently entertaining for a vacation read, but if you're a Stross fan or a SCI-FI-y MMORPG fan, HALTING STATE is worth kicking around the house for a week or so.
Good start, but disappointing overall 2008-07-05
The starting premise is enough to carry the story through the first half of the book, but it disintegrates from there. The last quarter of the book is rushed and stumbles along into an unsatisfying ending. The book is worth reading, but it won't wind up on your shelf for a later second reading. I recommend getting a used copy of the paperback.
Function lost in form 2008-06-27
I was so angry about the time and money that I had wasted on this book that I broke a personal precedent to write this, my first book review. I normally read science fiction purely for pleasure and relaxation, and have never tried to play "English Major" with my selections.
I struggled through 150pp of Mr. Stross' book before I finally put it down in disgust. It was taking an extraordinary amount of time to read, and I could not remember from session to session who the characters were, and what the story was about.
The author's silly literary device of describing each character's activities in the second person was driving me crazy. (From the start of each of the first three chapters - each from the viewpoint of a different character: "You're four hours into your shift..."; " You are sitting...in an armchair"; "...so it's off to work you go"). If I broke in the middle of a chapter, and returned later, I would have no idea whose viewpoint I was now reading.
Such an affected approach - devoid of objective context or reference - is distracting enough, but the author further muddies the mess by over-using another literary card trick: long single-sentence rambles through dozens of loosely-connected thoughts. After 10 or 15 lines, and at least that many phrases, I would find myself with no clear idea of what point the writer just made. It reminded me of some of the more tedious legal documents that I encountered in my business career.
If you enjoy structure over content, and your intellect is tickled by unusual approaches to telling stories, then perhaps you may find enjoyment here. Personally, I like to flow with a book, caught up in its cadence, action, and characters. Reading this was like trying to flow down a river full of rocky rapids. "Halting State" is a good description of the book itself.
Latest novel (2008) 2008-06-10
Better than "Glasshouse", and I thought "Glasshouse" was better than "Accelerando" (tighter, not so rambling). Good insights on what distinguishes our modern society from the societies of earlier times.
