The Quantum Thief

By: Hannu Rajaniemi

Narrated by: Scott Brick

The Quantum Thief is a Kirkus Reviews Best of 2011 Science Fiction & Fantasy title. One of Library Journal's Best SF/Fantasy Books of 2011.

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 stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of Mars. Now he’s confined inside the Dilemma Prison, where every day he has to get up and kill himself before his other self can kill him. Rescued by the mysterious Mieli and her flirtatious spacecraft, Jean is taken to the Oubliette, the Moving City of Mars, where time is currency, memories are treasures, and a moon-turned-singularity lights the night.

What Mieli offers is the chance to win back his freedom and the powers of his old self - in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed. As Jean undertakes a series of capers on behalf of Mieli and her mysterious masters, elsewhere in the Oubliette, investigator Isidore Beautrelet is called in to investigate the murder of a chocolatier, and finds himself on the trail of an arch-criminal, a man named le Flambeur....

The Quantum Thief is a crazy joyride through the solar system several centuries hence, a world of marching cities, ubiquitous public-key encryption, people communicating by sharing memories, and a race of hyper-advanced humans who originated as MMORPG guild members. But for all its wonders, it is also a story powered by very human motives of betrayal, revenge, and jealousy. It is a stunning debut.

©2010 Hanni Rajaniemi (P)2011 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"He's spectacularly delivered on the promise that this is likely the more important debut SF novel we'll see this year." ( LOCUS)

The Technology Rocks

This book was published four years ago, and while listening to Quantum Thief, I often felt 4 years old. I know that something important is being said, but I am not always able to understand the meaning. I was transfixed by the technology described in the book. To reduce the time it takes to communicate, characters often convey information by sending others a memory or thought. While not unique to this book, “time” is a form of currency and there is a pathetic scene where beggars plead for a few minutes of time to extend their life. The space craft used by the main characters is sentient and enjoys flirting with male passengers. But what did it all mean? Like a four year old, I do not have a clue. So, I clap my hands and squeal at the parts that I enjoyed.

Strange but good.

The story was a little confusing at first, but you learn what all the strange names and terms mean in a sort of organic way as you progress through the story. I would recommend looking some of them up if you get lost.

The use of post-technological sigularity inventions is thrilling and creative, and the characters are interesting. Overall a solid 4/5, possibly 5/5 if you reread it with a better understanding of the background.

The narrator is decent, but doesn't distinguish between various characters very well in comparison to other books I've listened too. Still, an overall pleasurable experience.

Made my head hurt in a good way

loved this story although it was very hard for me to understand. left me wanting to read the next.

Fabulous story with great performance

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I highly recommend this book if you're into good writing, tons of well-developed speculation about the development of future tech, and fantastic imagery that feels right and isn't a distraction from the plot.
Expect that you won't have a rock-solid understanding of everything for the first third of the book. Once you get some familiarity and context for the dozens of concepts that he incorporates, it'll all come together.
I challenge you not to keep thinking about it long afterward.

What other book might you compare The Quantum Thief to and why?

Dune. The depth of the world, the character development, technology and evolution so far advanced it appears as magic, but which contains a thread of possibility. Both books are literature.

Heavy read

I was very confused in the beginning of this book but so satisfied by the end. In typical SF fashion it is full of abstract technology but still a very character driven story. I don't think this would be a good fit for anyone looking for an easy read. You definitely have to pay attention and figure out a few things along the way. I'm looking forward to the second book.

Amazing journey

Will have to listen again for greater comprehension however this was an amazi g journey to be taken over and over again.

It took a bit

Very well written and a very good sci-fi setting. I honestly didn't like it at the beginning, wanted to stop listening, because nothing made sense to me. I kept listening and eventually it drew my attention more and more.

good. not a casual read

unique book, a bit confusing
If u dont really like scott brick..dont read this..its hard enough to follow the story if you like him (I do)
not for everyone
very interesting nano-tech notions
and the quantum stuff is delicious

Transhumanist essential advanced

Long after you've mastered kurzweil's transcendent man & delved into relevant NF in theory of language, mind, & nanotechnology... After you've meditated on these things & found yourself wanting more discussion. Then you might be ready for this book. I actually cannot even tell if i truly liked the story or if I was so entranced by the accoutrements. You don't actually have to enjoy where the story takes you if you're adequately prepared for the mindbends. This book finally fuses the fantasy & scifi genres. There's now no need to settle elsewhere for less eminently plausible or less sensational supernatural: this book will make you think so much, it might just leave you indifferent as to the story.

Starts Confusing, Gets Exciting, Ends Awesome

The Quantum Thief is a post-singularity SF novel, meaning it takes place in a future where the line between man and machine has blurred and things like memory uploads, microcomputers in the brain, and functional immortality can exist. Rajaniemi starts out this book by showing more than he tells, presenting the world of Jean Le Flambeur as he would tell it with little consideration for how little we understand of that world. Consequently, the first two hours or so of the book were utterly confusing. I had no idea what was going on, and I had lots of problems just visualizing the scenes and the environment. I began to worry that the whole novel would be told as a series of sense impressions.

A bit later, however, the writing style moves away from that extreme show-don't-tell style and it presents itself itself with detailed, character-driven scenes that caught me by surprise and delighted me to the end. The amount of detail Rajaniemi applies to his fictional future is staggering, and it's all presented in a coherent and enjoyable ride filled with enough action, intrigue, and general sensawunada to keep any SF fan happy. After having read it, I'm kind of surprised it didn't make the cut for the Hugo, if that tells you anything about how much I liked it. It's smart, and once you get into it you find it's got some panache with the way it incorporates technology, bits from contemporary culture, symbolism and tropes from literature, and homages to SF.

Charles Stross, another favorite of mine (and who writes a praising blurb on the book jacket of Quantum Thief) described Rajaniemi as "if you dropped Greg Egan's hard physics chops into a rebooted Finnish version of Al[astair] Reynolds with the writing talent of a Ted Chiang you'd begin to get a rough approximation of the scale of his talent." I find myself whole-heartedly agreeing with this estimation. I started off confused and annoyed with this one, and ended feeling like I could listen to it again and chomping at the bit for the next book in the trilogy. This was my first experience listening to Scott Brick as a narrator, and I think he did a pretty great job with it. Although at times he reminds me of Jonathan Davis in that moody, cloudy-day speech style of his (which can get a little old after a while), he performed the book instead of just reading it.