The first thing you notice reading this near-term SF police procedural is that it's written in second-person present tense. And you switch POVs between five or six people every few pages. This proves to be rather irritating to you, and it takes you almost 100 pages to stop noticing it and get into the story.
Okay, that's enough of that. This is a sequel to Halting State, but you're okay starting here. I suspect Halting State told us why Kavanaugh is in her dead-end job, but no matter. (BTW Rule 34 - I had to look it up - says that if it exists, there's porn of it.) The book does take a while to get going, but about halfway through all the strings start to come together into this bizarre web. Lots of techy jargon, and the cops' slang is pretty thick too, but easy enough to figure out. The two main subplots are psuedo nation-states created in order to spin off debt, and of course brokers trying to scam off that; plus artificial intelligence created to fight spam but taking it to extremes. Published in 2011, some of what were future predictions then are coming true now. Interesting stuff. I liked Kavanaugh a lot, but I felt most of the other characters were kind of flat, and not very likeable.
Okay, that's enough of that. This is a sequel to Halting State, but you're okay starting here. I suspect Halting State told us why Kavanaugh is in her dead-end job, but no matter. (BTW Rule 34 - I had to look it up - says that if it exists, there's porn of it.) The book does take a while to get going, but about halfway through all the strings start to come together into this bizarre web. Lots of techy jargon, and the cops' slang is pretty thick too, but easy enough to figure out. The two main subplots are psuedo nation-states created in order to spin off debt, and of course brokers trying to scam off that; plus artificial intelligence created to fight spam but taking it to extremes. Published in 2011, some of what were future predictions then are coming true now. Interesting stuff. I liked Kavanaugh a lot, but I felt most of the other characters were kind of flat, and not very likeable.
