Its protagonist, Jean Le Flambeur, is described as a “post-human criminal”, a mysterious thief who can steal into something called, with echoes of artificial intelligence, the “vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System”, and nicking rare Earth antiques from “the aristocrats of the Moving Cities of Mars”. The book’s description ticks all of the right boxes for a novel which sits squarely in the emerging singularity sub-genre of science fiction. If you read the synopsis of the Quantum Thief on its back cover, you would probably believe the book is something of a heist story, but set in a post-human Solar System. Like Patrick Rothfuss’ stellar 2007 effort, The Name of the Wind, Rajaniemi’s novel is the real thing. The speculative fiction scene has had a lot of ‘false starts’ over the past few years - debut novels proclaimed to be the next big thing, which turned out to be disappointed and immature efforts.

If, like me, you believe the ultimate aim of science fiction is to question and challenge what it means to be human - and ultimately, to reaffirm your belief in humanity in general - pick this book up immediately. It is a stunning debut.Review The Quantum Thief is that rarest of rare birds a first novel by a debut author which is a joy to read and helps take the science fiction genre in which it sits forward. But for all its wonders, it is also a story powered by very human motives of betrayal, revenge, and jealousy. The Quantum Thief is a crazy joyride through the solar system several centuries hence, a world of marching cities, ubiquitous public-key encryption, people communicating by sharing memories, and a race of hyper-advanced humans who originated as MMORPG guild members.

What Mieli offers is the chance to win back his freedom and the powers of his old self - in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed.Īs Jean undertakes a series of capers on behalf of Mieli and her mysterious masters, elsewhere in the Oubliette investigator Isidore Beautrelet is called in to investigate the murder of a chocolatier, and finds himself on the trail of an arch-criminal, a man named le Flambeur. Rescued by the mysterious Mieli and her flirtatious spacecraft, Jean is taken to the Oubliette, the Moving City of Mars, where time is currency, memories are treasures, and a moon-turned singularity lights the night. Now he's confined inside the Dilemma Prison, where every day he has to get up and kill himself before his other self can kill him. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy - from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of Mars. Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist, and trickster.

The quantum thief review