Review: The Fractal Prince, Hannu Rajaniemi

 

The Fractal Prince

Hannu Rajaniemi

Gollancz, 2012

ISBN 978-0-57508-892-4

I read Hannu Rajaneimi’s debut novel, The Quantum Thief, back in March… and I loved it. A hard sci-fi tale that manages to be at once intimidatingly intelligent and raucously enjoyable, it is now one of my favourite genre reads. So it goes without saying that I was eagerly anticipating the sequel, The Fractal Prince. Luckily for me, Gollancz were kind enough to send me a review copy when the book came out last month. (Thank you, Gollancz!) The slight delay in my review is due to the fact that I re-read The Quantum Thief before plunging into the next instalment. This is something I would recommend doing, because whilst The Fractal Prince does offer some summary of The Quantum Thief’s events, it will prove a rather confusing ride if the first book isn’t fresh in your mind. (Then again, everyone’s different; perhaps your memory is better than mine!)

The Fractal Prince continues the adventures of Jean Le Fambeur and his captor-come-companion Mieli – and of course Perhonen, Mieli’s sassy ship. Following their escapades on Mars, they are heading towards Earth for the next stage of their mission. However, on their way an encounter with a sobornost Founder gogol throws up fresh questions and creates new priorities for Jean. Meanwhile, on Earth we are introduced to a new protagonist: Tawaddud Gomelez, daughter to an aristocratic family who live in the last remaining city on Earth. Located in what was once the Middle East, Sirr is a bewildering and bustling metropolis populated by embodied people, tiny ‘fast ones, and disembodied ‘jinni’. Treasure-hunters venture into the desert to salvage ancient technology, while feral ‘wildcode’ runs rampant, causing horrific mutations and worse. But it’s not until Tawaddud gets caught up in the city’s political manoeuvrings that she discovers just how much chaos is stirring in Sirr.

This book was definitely a worthy follow-up to Rajaniemi’s 2011 debut. Once again, the author’s astounding imagination burst from the pages, presenting readers with a richly imagined and fiendishly clever vision of the future. The perspective was also expanded from that of The Quantum Thief (as you would expect from a sequel), with new settings and many more details revealed about the sobornost, the zoku, and the various posthuman peoples who populate this far-future solar system. The protagonists, too, show many new facets, with Rajaneimi disclosing more about their histories and motivations as the narrative progresses.

For me, one of the highlights of The Quantum Thief was the ‘Oubliette’ city on Mars and its accompanying system of privacy ‘gevulot’, and again in The Fractal Prince the setting was particularly impressive. I loved the author’s conception of Earth’s last city, its wildcode-ravaged fringes, and its eclectic populace. Rajaneimi avoids long descriptive paragraphs, but has a knack for conveying the richly textured feel of his setting and its hectic atmosphere with clarity and flair. This also applies to the science fictional concepts, which – as in The Quantum Thief – are complex and never fully explained. Nevertheless, Rajaniemi has a neat trick to make sure they remain (at least somewhat) comprehensible to his readers, i.e. by referring to them using fantastical terminology – for example, clouds of nanoparticles are ‘utility fog’, and when used for transport they are (magic) ‘carpets’. This use of fantastical nomenclature helps readers to visualise these futuristic elements even if the science on which they’re based is beyond them (as it often was me!).

The characters likewise continued to be a delight. As I said in my Quantum Thief review, I’m often worried that in hard SF characterisation might take a backseat to ideas and plot, but that’s definitely not the case with Rajaniemi’s writing. Jean and Mieli’s relationship remained interesting, oscillating as it does between solidarity and suspicion, and even Perhonen showed an unexpected side. I was sad to have left Isidore on Mars in The Quantum Thief, but new character Tawadudd made up for that. Serving as the reader’s sole native viewpoint of Earth, her character was perfect for revealing the different sides of Sirr and the factions operating there. Caught between her desire to impress her aristocratic father and her fascination with the strange jinni of the desert, Tawaddud serves as a bridge between the ‘high’ and ‘low’ of the city. She’s also a good example of that elusive being, the ‘Strong Female Character’: independent, determined, and intelligent. So thumbs up for her!

Rajaniemi also has a real talent for including amusing character scenes and interactions – even when the narrative’s moving along at a swift clip (which is most of the time) – and these instances of light-heartedness made the book that much more of a joy to read.

And now to the part that I both admired and had reservations about: the plot structure. First off, it can’t be denied that the structure of The Fractal Prince is handled very cleverly. ‘Fractal’ by name and nature, the novel uses the device of (un)folding stories within stories – purposefully riffing off One Thousand and One Nights, the Arabian setting of which is echoed in Sirr. Later chapters turn back upon themselves, referring unexpectedly to earlier episodes, whilst characters are constantly telling stories to each other. Indeed, in Sirr stories act as a kind of currency for the jinni who live in the desert, and are seen as both dangerous and valuable.

While I was struck with the ambitiousness of this structure, and admired the way in which it gradually disclosed different elements of the characters, it also had me confused, and I often needed to revisit earlier chapters to regain my grasp of what was going on or to check which timeline I was on. I’m also sure that quite a few things went over my head, and although I’m all for re-reading books to spot things missed the first time around, I did wish that The Fractal Prince had given me a few more pointers along the way. So whereas I praised The Quantum Thief for immersing readers in its world without letting us drown in it, this time I felt I got rather a lot of water in my lungs (please excuse the clumsy metaphor!). I enjoyed the book regardless, but less patient readers might come away frustrated.

To some extent, my occasional bewilderment is partly because of Rajaniemi’s economic writing style. I’m aware I’m contradicting myself a bit here, but whereas earlier I praised the economy of description when it came to the setting, this same trait was detrimental to some of the book’s action sequences. There were places in The Fractal Prince where more description would have helped me to follow and visualise the action. I also felt – particularly in the climactic sequences towards the end – that Rajaniemi sold himself a bit short. The Fractal Prince has some truly cracking epic set-pieces, and I felt that the author could have dwelt on them for longer to milk the full impact of such important, large-scale scenes. In this respect, I agree with Adam Roberts in his Guardian review where he says that The Fractal Prince falls short of evoking ‘the sublime’ – though I’m sure that Rajaniemi is more than capable of achieving this, and I look forward to seeing what he comes up with in the final instalment of his trilogy.

Overall, then, despite some reservations I found The Fractal Prince extremely enjoyable, and can safely say that Hannu Rajaneimi is producing some of the most exciting, lively, and ambitious SF I have ever read. So, whilst The Fractal Prince is more difficult to follow than The Quantum Thief (and shouldn’t be attempted without having read the first one), I highly, highly recommend that you experience both of these novels. You’ll need to keep your wits about you, but it’s definitely worth it.

Review: The Quantum Thief, Hannu Rajaniemi

The Quantum Thief

Hannu Rajaniemi

Gollancz, 2011

ISBN 978-0-57508-889-4

If you’ve read Hannu Rajaniemi’s biography, you’ll already be aware that he’s a highly intelligent man. Director and cofounder of a mathematics think-tank, with a degree in mathematical physics and a PhD in string theory, his credentials are intimidating to say the least. But if there’s one thing that’s truly convinced me of his genius, it was reading his breathtaking debut novel, The Quantum Thief, an action-packed and turbo-paced hard-SF tale.

The novel had a lot to live up to. Rajaniemi secured a three-book deal with Gollancz based on just a single chapter of The Quantum Thief, and upon its release it was nominated for the Locus award for Best First Novel (which in the end was awarded – somewhat bafflingly, in my humble opinion – to N. K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms). Knowing those things – and adding the fact that I don’t generally go in for hard-SF – I approached the book knowing that it would have to be spectacular for me not to come away disappointed in some way.

It was more than spectacular. It was mind-blowing.

Set in our solar system in the far future, The Quantum Thief is a dazzling tale in which humanity, technology, and data-manipulation are enmeshed, and people live a complex post-human existence where replication, re-incarnation, and bodily enhancement are not merely possible but entirely normal occurrences.

Here, I blurbinate:

Jean le Flambeur is a thief – but not just any thief. His feats are legendary, epic in scope. It is said that has stolen secrets from the minds of Kings, a sunlift factory from the Sobornost elite, and infiltrated a guberniya brain of the Inner System. Thievery is his gift, his obsession, his joy. It’s also the reason for his current uncomfortable situation. For le Flambeur has just been busted out of prison, and his rescuer, the inscrutable Mieli, turns out to be another form of gaoler. She – or whomever she’s working for – wants him to steal something. But before he can do that, le Flambeur must first retrieve his previous identity, the clues to which lie on terraformed Mars. There, in the great, moving city of the Oubliette, where privacy is the highest priority and wealth is measured in Time, le Flambeur and Mieli must piece together the thief’s enigmatic past. But they are not the only ones investigating. A brilliant young detective named Isidore, along with a group of masked crusaders called the Tzaddikim, also have an interest in le Flambeur. And interests have a habit of clashing…

The concepts Rajaniemi has come up with in The Quantum Thief are simply astounding. Hard-SF they may be, yet they also have a poetic quality to them that makes them appeal to the fantasy fan in me. Butterflies as avatars; ‘Quiets’ in monstrous bodies, toiling beneath a moving city; a system of memory ‘keys’ that can be manifested as physical objects… the list could go on. Most admirably of all, Rajaniemi manages to present us with an exciting and emotionally poignant tale that is bound up with his fantastic ideas whilst never being bogged down with them. The concepts are introduced within the story’s flow, giving us enough information to get a good grasp of them, but not enough to set off the infodump alarm bells. We’re immersed in the tale from the start – but we don’t drown in it.

It’s often a fear of mine that, in a high-concept science fiction novel such as this, plot – and especially character – might fall by the wayside. (Perhaps this is a preconception of mine about hard-SF, that’s actually more false than it is true? But that’s another conversation.) In The Quantum Thief, these facets are definitely not neglected. The characters are wonderful. Le Flambeur is delightfully mischievous, Mieli is frickin’ hardcore, Isidore is endearingly rumpled and put-upon. My favourite, though, was Perhonen, Mieli’s cute, gutsy ship. Wait, can a spaceship be cute, you ask? Hells yes it can!

The plot too, does not disappoint. The Quantum Thief has twists, surprises, and some frickin’ cool action sequences. But it’s also not too action-heavy; that side of things is balanced out by the well thought-out, intriguing, and often amusing character interactions and development.

The writing was also impressive. It’s detailed but unfussy, sharp but not too stark. Rajaniemi also adds a brilliant touch when he uses archetypal language in the chapter titles, naming his characters as ‘The Thief’, ‘The Detective’, ‘The King’, etc. This was a wonderful choice, as it gives an extra sense of continuity with this far-off world and its characters, who, strange and augmented though they may be, are, at heart (or, perhaps, at mind), human like us. The chapter headings are also illustrative of another thing about The Quantum Thief that I really admired: despite the fact that the culture the novel presents is completely technologically dependent, Rajaniemi has conceived of it in such a way that it does not lose its connection to the spiritual or mythic resonances of life. The language of ‘gods’ and ‘goddesses’ might mean something slightly different in this distant world, but the possibility of beings or existences that are beyond, unknown, other is not excluded.

My only criticism of this fantastic debut is that, towards the end, events ramp up so fast that it does become a tiny bit difficult to follow. For the majority of the book, things are paced so that readers have time to orientate themselves amongst the different concepts and factions involved, and retain their bearings. The nature of a climactic end-point makes this hard to maintain, and as the tempo increases you do start to feel a tad at sea (or I did, anyway). It certainly wasn’t a major problem, however, and in fact I have the feeling that this is the kind of book that will yield yet more enjoyment on a second reading, as you pick up on things that you didn’t the first time round. And it’s definitely a book that I would be delighted to read again.

And, because it bears repeating: Hannu Rajaniemi, you are a genius.