The Fractal Prince

by Hannu Rajaniemi

Overview

The Quantum Thief sequel is “stupefyingly entertaining, like a heist movie for post-singularity, AI-boosted string theoreticians from beyond spacetime” (Charles Stross).

“The good thing is, no one will ever die again. The bad thing is, everyone will want to.”

A physicist receives a mysterious paper. The ideas in it are far, far ahead of current thinking and quite, quite terrifying. In a city of “fast ones,” shadow players, and jinni, two sisters contemplate a revolution.

And on the edges of reality a thief, helped by a sardonic ship, is trying to break into a Schrödinger box for his patron. In the box is his freedom. Or not.

Jean de Flambeur is back. And he’s running out of time.

In Hannu Rajaniemi’s sparkling follow-up to the critically acclaimed international sensation The Quantum Thief, he returns to his awe-inspiring vision of the universe . . . and we discover what the future held for Earth.

“Stories within stories, mind-boggling scientific extrapolations, and flamboyant characters mark the author as a rising star of the genre.” —Library Journal

“Rajaniemi’s witty language and charmingly wry hero will make the read well worth the effort for the first installment’s fans.” —Publishers Weekly

“Fans of the author’s popular debut novel, which mixed hard science with wild fantasy, will probably be lining up for this follow-up, which resolves some of the questions posed in The Quantum Thief but, on the other hand, asks several more, for which there are, as yet, no answers.” —Booklist

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781429986632
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/01/2024
Series:	Jean le Flambeur , #2
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	308
Sales rank:	244,972
File size:	887 KB

About the Author

Born and raised in Finland, HANNU RAJANIEMI lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he is a founding director of a financial consultancy, ThinkTank Maths. He is the holder of several advanced degrees in mathematics and physics. Multilingual from an early age, he writes his science fiction in English. He is the author of The Quantum Thief, The Fractal Prince and The Causal Angel.

Editorial Reviews

Rajaniemi’s fun if sometimes torturously convoluted follow-up to 2011’s The Quantum Thief returns to the adventures of Jean le Flambeur, posthuman master thief, still unable to remember much of his past and now forced to work for space captain Mieli and her goddess/debtor Joséphine Pellegrini. On Earth, meanwhile, Tawaddud Gomelez schemes to advance her powerful father’s political fortunes and put behind her a blemished past that includes a dalliance with a jinni. Rajaniemi plays with Arabian Nights references, from a character named Dunyazad, after Scheherazade’s sister, to multilayered storytelling, but these elements never quite work alongside the hard postsingularity SF of Jean’s story. The plot can get muddled as a result, but Rajaniemi’s witty language (“On the day the Hunter comes for me, I am killing ghost cats from the Schrödinger Box”) and charmingly wry hero will make the read well worth the effort for the first installment’s fans. Agent: John Jarrold, John Jarrold Literary Agency. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

Intimidating sequel to The Quantum Thief (2011), Rajaniemi's spectacular, paranoid-conspiracy, hard sci-fi whodunit debut.” —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

When Mieli, the winged Hunter and servant of a goddess, encounters quantum thief Jean de Flambeur for the second time, the thief is in the process of experimenting with Schrödinger's box for his current patron. Together the pair must travel to Earth on a mission intimately involved in the planet's future. At the same time, two sisters in the haunted city of Sirr, one of the last cities on a broken Earth, plan a revolution to free their city from the might of the Sobornost's virtual control of the solar system. Rajaniemi's sequel to The Quantum Thief blends the action-based story of de Flambeur, Mieli, and the sarcastic, sentient ship Perbonen with the slower-paced story arc of sisters Tawaddud and Dunyazad as they work and plot for social change and freedom. VERDICT Stories within stories, mind-boggling scientific extrapolations, and flamboyant characters mark the author as a rising star of the genre.

Library Journal

Intimidating sequel to The Quantum Thief (2011), Rajaniemi's spectacular, paranoid-conspiracy, hard sci-fi whodunit debut. Thief extraordinaire Jean le Flambeur owes his continued existence to the Oortian warrior Mieli, her intelligent spaceship Perhonen, and her mysterious patron, the pellegrini. To pay the debt, he must execute another impossible heist: to loot the mind of a member of the Sobornost, the upload collective that rules Earth and whose ultimate goal is total control of reality itself. His target is Matjek Chen, the oldest of the Sobornost "chens," or avatars. On Earth, meanwhile, the Lady Tawaddud of House Gomelez, rulers of the Sirr, a city built out of the Shard, the habitable fragments of a vast crashed Sobornost spaceship, must solve a murder that threatens the ruling council. She will need help from Sumanguru, a sort of detective Sobornost avatar who, like all his kind, is vulnerable to the wildcode which swarms in from the desert. Tawaddud's father, Cassar, has selected a husband for her, but she trusts him even less than her sister Dunyazad, who seems less interested in solving the murder than keeping Tawaddud in her place. Above it all, seemingly, the Sobornost conduct their Great Game against the mysterious zoku, who manifest as magnificent jewels and have solved problems the Sobornost are unable to. This is all set forth within complex, intricately structured stories-within-stories, neologisms that yield meaning only after many repetitions and changes of context, and never a word of explication to smooth the way. Formidably challenging, with few of the thrills and spills that made the predecessor volume such a delight--would that Rajaniemi had kept at least some of his vast intellectual capacity tucked out of sight--but, mostly, rewarding. Something like Ted Chiang meets John C. Wright, moderated by Stephen Hawking.

Kirkus Reviews