Halting State (Ace Science Fiction) | 
 enlarge | Author: Charles Stross
Publisher: Ace
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy New: $3.77
You Save: $4.22 (53%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  55 reviews
Sales Rank: 9021
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 4.2 x 1
ISBN: 0441016073
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.92
EAN: 9780441016075
ASIN: 0441016073
Publication Date: June 24, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New. Delivery is usually 5 - 8 working days from order, International is by Royal Mail Airmail
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Product Description
Now in paperbackfrom the author of Saturns Children.
In the year 2018, a daring bank robbery has taken place at Hayek Associates. The suspects are a band of marauding orcs, with a dragon in tow for fire support, and the bank is located within the virtual reality land of Avalon Four. But Sergeant Sue Smith discovers that this virtual world robbery may be linked to some real world devastation.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 50 more reviews...
 Believable Near Future November 4, 2008
This is what real SciFi is all about (believable futures). If a writer can convince me what they are writing about can really happen, I am hooked. I am going read more of Charles Stross.
 Writing style that frustrates September 25, 2008
I am not usually the type to put a book down without plowing through the pages til the end before writing a review. Unfortunately I will never make it to the end with this book. The premise of the book is intriguing and the plot summary refreshing. However the tech lingo is so highly inbedded in long verbose sentences that require so much thought and re-reading that the enjoyment of the story is lost. Also, reading from the second person makes reading even more taxing.
Good Extrapolation about the Future September 16, 2008
I had never read any Charles Stross before. I found this to be a great book, well written with a nice, flowing style. The ideas about what the future will bring in the next few decades were believable and interesting, as was the story. A good read. I recommend it.
 "They're tunelling TCP/IP over AD&D!" September 15, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Near the end of this book, one of the protagonists blurts, "They're tunelling TCP/IP over AD&D!" And that line is a very good test for potentials readers, because if you understand it (and why it's kind of funny), you might enjoy the book. If you're scratching your head, well, you might still enjoy the book, but you're certainly in for a whole lot more head scratching along the way.
When you strip everything away, this near-future thriller is a cautionary tale about network and database security, and what can happen as our lives become increasingly wired and digitized. The premise is that someone has hacked their way into a MMOG and pulled off an in-game heist, thus triggering the involvement of a police sergeant, an unemployed software engineer, and a forensic accountant. The three characters are called in to investigate this crime and the chapters alternate between their perspectives.
Note that they are not the narrators -- that's because the entire book is written in the second person, a choice which some readers will absolutely hate. I didn't find it as grating as many reviewers did, but it certainly doesn't help the rather weak characterization). Unfortunately, the plot is awfully heavy with techie jargon and those who aren't network engineers or software developers (as the author has been), may find it rocky going. Similarly, the plot revolves around MMOGs and ARGs, and if you're not familiar with this kind of computer and live action gaming, you might get a little lost. In both cases, there are lots of nuances and inside jokes which will fly right over your head (I think I got about half of them). Finally, if the second person voice, techie and gaming jargon don't put you off, there's also a bit of Scots dialect to decipher (I didn't have a problem with it, but other readers seemed to really struggle with it.).
Probably the best thing about the book is the setting (Scotland, circa 2018) and the author's projection of how technology might have evolved over the last decade in ways that affect us all. It's very plausible and convincing -- which makes the story that much more interesting when it all goes pear-shaped. And when it does start to go wrong, the scale shifts from contained crime to all-out infowar, complete with international hacker crews and EU black ops squads. While I could see the point being made by such a shift in scale (a country, even an superpower, totally destabilized via hacking/infowar), it also moved the book into conventional disaster/thriller turf, which I'm not a huge fan of.
I'm a very occasional reader of science fiction, and I prefer my sci-fi to be immersive and contained. The first half of this book does a good job of setting up near-future Scotland and how society might be slightly different, but as it went on and the techspeak got more and more complex, and the stakes went through the roof, I found myself less and less engaged. To be fair, I am neither an online gamer, nor a computer techie, but I have plenty of friends who are, and I think they might find it a little bit more fun of a read than I did.
 Second Person Narrative September 8, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I found the second person narrative to be horribly distracting, and could not make it past the second chapter because of this. While it is clearly a homage to adventure games gone by, I was hoping for a more grown up way of writing for this.
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