It was called in as a robbery. So you can imagine Sergeant Sue Smith’s mood as she watches the video footage of the heist being carried out by a band of Orcs and a Dragon, and realizes that the robbery from an online game company is actually a robbery in an online game. Things aren’t to get any better for Sergeant Sue Smith as the consequences of this robbery start affecting the real world outside and bodies start showing up.

Review

Halting State

This is the second time I read this novel, but the first time I gave up after a couple of chapters. After I had read some other novels by Charles Stross from the Bob Howard – Laundry series and the Merchant Princes series, I decided to give Halting State another try. At first it is a bit confusing, because each chapter is told from the point of view of one of the 3 main protagonists, and there are lots of other characters as well. The story takes some time getting into, but it gets better and better as you continue reading. For example, halfway through the book, I decided to rate it 3 stars or 6/10, but I kept reevaluating my rating and by the end of the book I felt it earned an 8/10 or 4 stars.
The attractiveness of this novel lies in the near future setting and the near future technologies:

• the independent Republic of Scotland
• the European Union of 30 with Russia as potential member
• the 3 major powers in the world China, India and the EU; the USA needed a time out
• accessing the web via your glasses and virtual keyboards
• quantum computing
• …

Have you ever considered what could happen when your remotely controlled cab gets hacked? Charles Stross has.

Apparently some people dislike the Scottish accent that crops up in conversations, but I think it is, pardon my French, just couleur locale. Even as a non-native English speaker I had no trouble understanding it.

As this novel and those from the Bob Howard – Laundry series are fast-paced and contain lots of computer jargon (networking, cryptography, video games, virtual worlds, hacking, security, cyberwar, …) they may appeal more to geeks than to the average science-fiction enthusiast.

Conclusion

Rating: 8/10 or . This is science-fiction for geeks.