Steven C. (SteveTheDM) - , reviewed on 1/9/2010 + 204 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

I *really* enjoyed this one. A tongue-in-cheek, James-Bond-style, spy thriller with techno-magic and eldritch horrors? What a wild combination this was. There's a lot of crazy hijinks going on, but never too much to get overly confusing.

Stross continues his experiments with strange tenses for storytelling, too. This one is told primarily in first-person *present*, which was a new thing for me. (A lot less annoying than the second-person perspective in Halting State, though --- I didn't notice Stross was using a strange tense until about halfway through the novel.)

A number of spots in this book had me laughing out loud as well. Some of the one-liners were fantastic. If you're a computer geek, especially a Linux hacker, there are a number of references that make it seem like this book was written just for you.

A hearty 5 stars.

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