Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist and trickster. 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 steal their thoughts, to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of the Moving Cities of Mars. Except that Jean made one mistake. Now he is condemned to play endless variations of a game-theoretic riddle in the vast virtual jail of the Axelrod Archons - the Dilemma Prison - against countless copies of himself.
Jean's routine of death, defection and cooperation is upset by the arrival of Mieli and her spidership, Perhonen. She offers him a chance to win back his freedom and the powers of his old self - in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed . . .
The Quantum Thief is a dazzling hard SF novel set in the solar system of the far future - a heist novel peopled by bizarre post-humans but powered by very human motives of betrayal, revenge and jealousy. It is a stunning debut.
The Quantum Thief by
Hannu Rajaniemi is one of the books that I'm really looking forward to this year and by the look of the cover and synopsis I doubt I'll be disappointed. The cover is a strange one, with what looks to be the Spidership in orbit around Mars along with a blue butterfly - what's that doing there?!
Gollancz have a few sci-fi books due out over the course of 2010 and a couple of debuts in there that I really fancy. Roll on September for this one!
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