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The Quantum Thief

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The Quantum Thief

By: Hannu Rajaniemi
Narrated by: Rupert Degas
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About this listen

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. 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.

2011, John W. Campbell Memorial Award, Short-listed

©2010 Hannu Rajaniemi (P)2011 Orion Publishing Group Ltd Adventure Genetic Engineering Science Fiction Space Exploration Fiction Thief Solar System Mind-bending

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All stars
Most relevant
Great narration and production and the story is great too, shame there are not audiobook versions of the two sequels (which I will now being buying)

Great narration and production!

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Takes a little bit to get going but I ended up being blown away. The. World building is incredible and done entirely through show not tell in a way at just works.

The only downsides are: 1) the narration, though fantastic, is a bit quiet. Even at max I couldn't listen to this while in even a moderately noisy place.

2) The Fractal Prince isn't on audible as of writing. Very annoying, hopefully it will come soon.

Overall Excellent, narrator quiet at time.

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brings to light some mind blowing concepts, but is very unforgiving to the reader in the twists and turns. even with a glossary, it is a hard work to keep track of what is going on and every now or then one must flip a table in giving up, f*ck it, I don't have any idea who the bleeb is that and what the bleeb is going on; I'll go and read something light and easy like GoT and come back to this again later...

enjoyable, but hard to follow.

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I loved the world, it is incredibly detailed and well thought out. My only issue is that there is so much it gets a bit confusing at times.

The narration was perfect, but was slightly marred by the audio mixing. It was no fault of Rupert Degas, but some characters were far quieter than others and made some bits hard to hear. Not a deal breaker though

A very rich, if confusing world

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A good, innovative story but benefits from a second reading since so many invented terms are not explained. Their meaning becomes clear as the story continues but re-reading the book when you know what the writer is taking about is a must.

A good but obscure story

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