"As always, before the warmind and I shoot each other, I try to make small talk."
As opening lines go The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniem, takes the Salvador Dali award for surrealism. And don't expect it to end there: The obscure and often baffling science-fiction world of The Quantum Thief never lets up. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing - having read books on relativity, quantum mechanics and string theory this novel still gave my brain a good workout!
The Quantum Thief is a multi-strand narrative that mainly follows the exploits of Jean le Flambeur, a post-human Thief with a near legendary reputation. After his escape from the Dilemma Prison le Flambeur is enlisted by an Oortian warrior, named Mieli, to carry out a very strange heist.
Le Flambeur's thread is written in first person while the other main characters are all written in the third person. This can be slightly disorienting if it is the first time you've read a narrative in this style, but it wont take you long to get along with it.
Jean le Flambeur is obviously meant to be the star (along with The Detective) and is an interesting character, but - for me - it was the moody and sometimes cruel Mieli the Oortian who stole the show. This adds to the book as having strong supporting characters as well as a charismatic protagonist makes for good reading.
The Quantum Thief is Rajaniem's debut novel and cannot be faulted for its scope, style or literary skill. As full of hard science-fiction concepts as this novel is, it often seems to flirt with fantasy. Rajaniem definitely seems to be of the opinion that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" (Arthur C. Clarke's third law) which I don't necessarily agree with: Surely any post Scientific Method society would be able to work out the difference - if you showed Werner Heisenberg a smart-phone I doubt he would have called it witchcraft! I never felt The Quantum Thief was beyond the remit of science-fiction (to be fair Hannu Rajaniem has a Ph. D. in Mathematical Physics and you can tell this from his writing!)
The Verdict
The Quantum Thief is a fast-paced and well written novel full of interesting characters, weird and wonderful concepts and an interesting plot with a few decent twists. I would recommend it to anyone who has enjoyed the works of Ian M Banks or similar far-future science-fiction novels. Imaginative, intriguing and an interesting world to delve into.
LHSRAting for The Quantum Thief 8/10
-Mike
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