by Hannu Rajaniemi
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Oct 2012
320 pages
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Publication Information
"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.
Jean de Flambeur is back. And he's running out of time.
In Hannu Rajaniemi's sparkling follow-up to the critically acclaimed international sensation The Quantum Thief, he returns to his awe-inspiring vision of the universe… and we discover what the future held for Earth.
"The Fractal Prince addresses some of the largest issues – immortality and death, love and betrayal, the power of story – but it feels more like an intricate, bejewelled device than a deathstar. Often beautiful, it's also, often, rather stiff: a complex but inert piece of art, a mannequin rather than a real boy. But that's as much a strength as a weakness. Thoughtful, hard, densely realised and highly patterned, there's nothing quite like it in contemporary SF." - The Guardian (UK)
"The Fractal Prince is fantastically crafted, studiously stimulating, and aesthetically oh-so-satisfying science fiction. Hannu Rajaniemi may not be a man to hold hands, but surely exploration is more interesting, ultimately, than instruction. So sure, you'll burn a few brain cells reading his new book, but this is a fair price to pay for such calculated artistry." - Tor.com
This information about The Fractal Prince was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Born and raised in Finland, Hannu Rajaniemi lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he is a founding director of a financial consultancy, ThinkTank Maths. He is the holder of several advanced degrees in mathematics and physics. Multilingual from an early age, he writes his science fiction in English.
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