Obsolete Your Idols

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Originally uploaded by Binder Of Daemons

BEHOLD MY GLORY.

I read another Charles Stross novel, Halting State. Overall, I think I enjoyed Glasshouse slightly more, but this one was more amusing more often. It starts with a bank inside an MMORPG getting robbed and ends with a 419 nod, so it’s an internet-savvy narrative. It’s got some characters who are likable, though their flaws don’t seem to really hinder them. The shy nerd with a sexcrime history gets laid, the cop with the uppity kid never has to take time off from the case to settle his hash, the accountant with the brittle work situation never suffers from office politics during the course of the story. It’s pretty light on the characters but correspondingly there’s some meaty cryptographic and augmented reality dealt to the reader in careful doses.

The more I think about it, the less satisfied I am with the way things resolve, so I’m optimistic about a rumored sequel which I hope will explain more about why Scotland’s software infrastructure survives the threat which emerges in this novel, but that’s just quibbling. This is a pretty good near future sf novel with varied characters and a briskly moving storyline.

Who might like it

• Gamers, both the tabletop and mmorpg flavors, and possibly casino to a lesser degree.
• Fans of nerd protagonists.
• People who just can’t get enough of the intricate crinkling of police procedurals.

Who might not like it

• People who think you’re getting a whole novel about people playing an MMORPG.
• People who felt Orcbusters in The Computer Always Shoots Twice was fundamentally cheating.

I made some tiny updates to bring my resume up to date since it’d been awhile and put it online again. It’s linked from the top of the manjusri.org domain.

Then I played around a little bit with the Powell’s Partner Bookshelf thing and have a shelf of some of my favorite books.

Also added to the Socialize Me page if you want it again later.

Did you like Brimstone? Did you like Unknown Armies? The novel Godwalker? The comic book Lucifer? Immortal the RPG?  Delta Green?

If you didn’t say yes to at least one of those, you’re excused.  Go skip ahead to something else in your flist or your feed reader.

Still here? Then you’ll like Sandman Slim.  It’s a novel which could have been told as a story in any of those settings but wasn’t, because it was told by Richard Kadrey.  It’s a revenge story, it’s a modern era magic story, it’s a buddy story, it’s a story about a lucky loser who more or less emerges triumphant from his character arc.  It’s really good.  But I don’t know how much appeal it’ll have to someone who isn’t already into that gritty street magic paranormal anti-romance groove when this book hits their eyes.

For those of you would like this, go read it.  It’s a fast moving story with very few aggravations.  If you’re not one of the people who would like this, you suck.  What are you doing still reading this, anyway?  I told you to beat it!