The Fractal Prince by Hannu Rajaniemi,
The Quantum Thief Trilogy #2
“The good thing is, no one
will ever die again. The bad thing is, everyone will want to.”
A physicist receives a
mysterious paper. The ideas in it are far, far ahead of current thinking and
quite, quite terrifying. In a city of “fast ones,” shadow players, and jinni,
two sisters contemplate a revolution.
And on the edges of reality
a thief, helped by a sardonic ship, is trying to break into a Schrödinger box
for his patron. In the box is his freedom. Or not.
The Fractal Prince is the second book in the Quantum Thief
Trilogy written by the Finish author Hannu Rajaniemi. What got me first
interested in his series was promise of it. The usage of heavy mathematics
themes and quantum effects to bolster the Science Fiction side of his story.
Now unfortunately I haven’t been able to read his debut book “The Quantum
Thief”. so I cannot relate any events that transpired in the first book. I
dived straight into the second book hoping that I would understand everything
that was being told. I do think there was a brief recapture of what happened in
the first book, but still I think reading the first book is a must to
understand everything fully. I’m adding it to my to read list. Just up front.
The Fractal Prince is ambitious, amazing and a bit of mind blowing thrown in
there as well.
The Fractal Prince centers around the gentleman thief Jean le
Flambeur, who had to escape from prison and find out about the truth of his
many previous selves. The first thing that falls to notice about Jean character
is that he is truly a gentleman thief. With the Fractal Prince being set in
deep space, his trickster and bit of a rogueish attitude comes greatly to live
and he closely reminded me of Eli Monpress’ characters. Having witty and funny
remarks on the fly. here is an example
of when the ship Perhonen says something about the
wrong decisions of Jean.
“Wrong is such a strong word,’ I say. ‘I prefer
unconventional.’”
There are many more hidden within the book that make Jean’s
character a treat to read about.
Yes, you read it correctly above talking ship! This just one
small part of the science that is introduced in The Fractal Prince and it
predecessor. There is a lot of high-tech
techno stuff used. Just to name a few you have the wildcode, Realmspace, the
zoku crystal and the jinn. I think with not having read the first book this was
my greatest challenge to grasp (ill get to the storyline later on). Some of
these elements must have been explained in the first book and I found myself
scratching my head and saying eh? and I just re-read the passage again. However
getting deeper and deeper into The Fractal Prince several techno elements were
actually quite nicely explained which gave a nice grasp on the story while
reflecting after knowing what it actually meant. Another thing is that some
elements are meant to be kept in a bit of a blackbox state, you know it is
possible but how it exactly works it entirely up to you, and with the high
level of these elements it is actually quite fun to let you imagination loose
on how you think this stuff works.
As for the storyline I already mentioned the protagonist Jean Le
Flambeur, next to him there is another character that has a her own storyline
that alternate the chapter of Jean. Tawaddud. The world of Tawaddud in
Sirr-in-the-sky was completely different then were the stories of Jean played
out. It is much rougher, showing more of a disorganized world featuring the
wildcode desert, a civilization full of troubles and two of the coolest things
of the book, body thieves and the jinn. I won’t elaborate about the latter two
but they were fun to read about, and I am referring to my “eh? scratching my
head” state. The Fractal Prince draws its strength from several points but they
are in my opinion driven by the idea of The Quantum Thief Trilogy as well as
the storylines. Though both Jean’s and Tawaddud’s stand out be itself it is
when they come together that you get the full gist of the story. The fractal
element as the titles suggest resonates strongly in the stories from Jean and
Tawaddud as well as in the complex mind setting, it is not 100% linear story,
it is like I mentioned earlier and ambitious and challenging read.
The Fractal Prince is a book that you can categorize in the
space opera scifi, and yes it does seem to fit there. But in my opinion not
fully. With the ambitious and amazing ideas that are introduced in The Fractal
Prince by Hannu Rajaniemi. The Fractal Prince is definitely is in a league of
its own. It is by it self a daring and sometime mysterious read, that will can
either overload your brain to the point that you cannot take in anymore of the
technostuff introduced, or if you are like me and are into this to let you
immerse in this magnificently ambitious - brain-cell burning - inventive story.