Review of The Quantum Thief, a novel by Hannu Rajaniemi.
Reading The Quantum Thief is like opening a bottle full of lightning. It crashes into you with the speed of light, with the force of a thunderstorm, a sledgehammer, a typhoon, and you didn't see it coming, oh no you didn't. Suddenly your head is filled to the brim with words and concepts and twists on words and concepts and the before you realise it you're drowning in them, swallowed in the storm, electricity crackling around you.
People say that this novel is a "diamond hard science fiction" for the way it uses cutting-edge words like "q-dot bubble" or "von Neumann particle" or "Hawking reaction" or singularity whatever, and oh boy you're gonna see wackier terminologies in the book. I honestly don't know if Rajaniemi only nicked these words from a physics textbook-- Actually, strike that. He has a PhD in in mathematical physics, he probably know exactly what any of these words mean and used them accordingly. But for me personally? As someone with limited education in the physical science, it's easier to think of it, all of it, as fantasy nonsense!!
This isn't a bad thing. The way Rajaniemi writes, he actually does Fantasy Nonsense extremely well. Every part of each building block of the world in The Quantum Thief is extremely well-thought of, every piece connected to every other piece, creating a web complicated enough you can believe it as a reality. It's a whole different world from the one we're living on, working on an entirely different rule, but the rule make sense within itself. Concepts that might sound like they're just pulled out of his ass are still connected to the world as a whole, just as the real world has wacky-sounding concepts that still make sense within itself ("Why is the sky blue? Because of the way light scatters" "Why do apples fall downwards? Because of a force called gravity"). There's an explanation for everything, if you look.
And oh, you are going to have to look to understand anything. You're not going to see any part of its world explained so plainly, oh no. This book scatters its world building like rain in a storm. Randomly, but in quantity so great and complete you find yourself drenched in them without being able to pinpoint any one specific drop.
Again, this isn't a bad thing, but your mileage may vary. Figuring out how the world works through the little hints you are given, figuring out the shape of the storm from the rain, is half the fun of reading Rajaniemi's work. It's not unlike solving a mystery: pick up the pieces, see how they fit together, and gaze in wonder as the world opens itself up to you. Some prior knowledge might help you---my basic knowledge of French was helpful in guessing what the main character's name mean, for example---but if you're keen, you can spot the connection right there between the lines. This? Thing thing Rajaniemi is doing? It's amazing. It's bold as heck. And I've never seen it done so effectively anywhere else, or even attempted anywhere else.
So The Quantum Thief's world-building is unrivalled, but, I don't know what black magic is at play here, it still tells a good riveting story. It has drama, action, characters, even ass-kicking. Ass-kicking! In a deeply thoughtful science fiction! Described one way it can sound like an airport thriller ("An amnesiac thief must pull off the heist of a lifetime!") described another it's a philosophical look to the future ("In a city where memories are uploaded to the cloud and people never die, one man must find his past."). It excites and engrosses like a good story, but it also pushes you to think and contemplate. It attempted everything and, if not successful, it at least got away with it. Even if you can't completely solve the puzzle of its world-building, you can still enjoy everything else about it.
It's filled with so many interesting characters too: a gentleman thief who's lost his memories but retain his sparks, a sharp-eyed but young and indecisive detective, a ship who loves her creator dearly, women armed with wings sung into existence, men who have become gods. Some of them might jut take after common archetypes, but they're still told in manners that make them interesting and even relateable. Their plights and desires, even inside the layers and layers of world-building, still struck at me.
The Quantum Thief is a darn miracle. It caught lightning and bottled it. You'd think that kind of thing can only ever be done once, but darn, Rajaniemi wrote two sequels. I've only read The Fractal Prince and have yet to taste The Causal Angel but I found that it also does not relent.
Should you read it? Heck if I know. It's definitely not for everyone, and I wouldn't impose this to anyone in the same way that I won't recommend people to get hit by lightning. But if you're like me, if your mind does a lot of thinking behind your back, if you don't mind being taken for a ride, yes? Please read it. And then maybe I can have a friend to yell about this with.
