Review

"Rajaniemi spins a yarn that ties old-fashioned adventure to cutting edge science without ever seeming contrived. The science fiction debut of the year, no contest." SFX "A brilliant debut." -- Eric Brown THE GUARDIAN "It is, at heart, a noir thriller in cosmic drag. In addition to its amnesiac antihero there's a down-at-heel detective and any number of femmes fatales. Wild SF concepts come thick and fast. Cities are mobile, spaceships are sentient, memories can be shared, and portions of a person's lifespan form the basis for financial transactions (time literally is money)." -- James Lovegrove THE FINANCIAL TIMES "The first line of The Quantum Thief promises a lot: humour, suspense, time paradoxes, philosophical puzzles and futuristic action, all tied up in a succinct and stylish knot. All this and more, the novel delivers. Inventive, exotic, densely plotted and compelling, this is an impressive debut." -- Lisa Tuttle THE TIMES "A brilliant first novel. The Quantum Thief, like so much of the best space opera of this century, is a prodigy house, where propositions are instant heritage, and arguments are eyeclick." STRANGE HORIZONS "The story unfolds briskly with barely a pause for breath, the plot is gripping, the ideas complex but thought-provoking, and there are all the requisite shocking revelations and intriguing plot twists you could wish for. The Quantum Thief is a bravura debut novel, a confident and accomplished work that reinvigorates the genre. It is easily the best SF debut since Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon." WERTZONE "Comes together piece by piece in the mode of M. John Harrison's Light - and it's every bit the equal of that modern-day genre masterpiece. Beneath the science, you see, beneath the staggering speculative wonder of it all, Hannu Rajaniemi has a knack for spare, no-nonsense storytelling that approaches the poetic at times. The Quantum Thief is a revelation, in the end, and make no mistake: we have here the sci-fi debut of 2010." SPECULTIVE SCOTSMAN "With its engaging narrative and characters backed by often almost intimidatingly good sci-fi concepts, it's easy to see why The Quantum Thief is being heavily, and deservedly touted, as the big SF debut of the year." SCI FI NOW The Quantum Thief is bursting with ideas and there sufficient action/battle scenes to slake any thirst for vicarious violence." INTERZONE "Serious SF disguised as a crime thriller with great success... a fun, addictive read." -- Anthony Brown TOTAL SCI FI "He's spectacularly delivered on the promise that this is likely the more important debut SF novel we'll see this year." -- Gary K Wolfe LOCUS "A wildly imaginative SF novel. Excellent." BBC FOCUS

Product Description

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.