Rule 34 (Halting State, Book 2) (A Halting State Novel)

there wasn't any porn anywhere 0/10

Maybe other people can stomach fiction in the second-person better than others, but I couldn't read past the second chapter.

I managed to finish this book in the course of two weeks, but I have to admit it had less to do with my enjoyment overall than with my obsession with figuring out how all the pieces in this story fit together. This story is more complex than the first Halting State book, although it benefits from the fact that readers don't need to have read the first book to understand it. This is a stand-alone story with a few references to the original, but the story is more complicated, its narratives woven together sometimes well, sometimes not so well. The characters aren't as enjoyable as the ones in the first Halting State, which detracted from my overall reading pleasure. Also, the hard-boiled narrative sometimes spilled from character to character, making the second-person narrative feel just a little out of place.

Small gripes that added up toward the end, and I admit that some of these gripes are subjective. Regardless, the mysterious storyline is fun, and as the pieces fit together toward the end, I found myself hoping that the main protagonist, Liz, comes back for the third book. I'll definitely read it.

This is a detective story set in the near future and written in second person present tense, so the writing style will not be for everyone. You get past that quirk, and you get a pretty interesting version of what crime fighting/life in the 2020s might look like. In Scotland. The story moves along quickly while switching between a variety of characters (so, there's no "protagonist" or "antagonist" as in a traditional novel), giving you a different sense of how the future looks to different kinds of people living in it. I thought the ending came out of nowhere at 85 mph and left me a little bit ... flat. It made a certain kind of sense, maybe, in a traditional SciFi type story ending.

It's not the greatest of Stross's novels. I rather hoped for another solid near-future scifi story but the science was a bit lacking and the ending unconvincing.

If you're a die hard Stross fan then by all means get it. If you're only starting to read his works I'd go with one of his other novels, all of which I felt were superior.

Typical Stross style weaving multiple stories lines together. Ending was a little less than satisfying like this book is the first part of series.

Warning: It's written in the second person. This leads to very ham-handed segments where he tries to describe you to yourself. Literally "Let's look at you. You are a tall, middle-aged man ... "

He tries very hard to cram in all sorts of edgy topics while at the same time using language like "manhood" for penis, which makes it hard to take him seriously. He jumps around a lot on subject matter which means you have to read quite a few chapters before you know what the hell he's trying to get at and how all of this connects. It's possible there was a reasonable payout eventually, but I got half-way through the book and couldn't take the ridiculousness anymore.

You like the second person style. At first the "you" thing seems a bit affected, but you get used to it, even when the point of view shifts. You like the energy in the writing. You don't read a lot of sci-fi but this one has a mystery flavor, which appeals.

You like the way Rule 34 starts because it's near-future stuff and not much has changed except there's a heck of a lot more monitoring of everybody's communications and the police, clearly, have quick access to whole reams of info and data on, well, everyone.

You wish you had read "Halting State," which preceded this book in theme and characters, but that's okay--you're quickly in the middle of some strange doings and some very unusual and colorful characters, including the washed-up detective Liz Kavanagh and The Gnome, a highly amusing player who is certainly a touch of genius.

(At this point, you must concede that you read this book on Audio CD and Robert Ian Mackenzie is positively brilliant with the Scottish touches he gives to the voice of The Gnome.)

You admire Stross' colorful style. Yes, humor aplenty. Some very funny lines that don't sound right out of context--they work because they contrast with all the darkness that is going on around.

The themes are interesting--computers, porn, sleaze, spam, Internet commerce, drugs, smuggling, nanotechnology, police and government surveillance, privacy, entertainment--and the writing and characters pull you straight along, though you wished you had polished up on your Internet terms like `botnet' and `memes' and the like. (Keep your Wikipedia handy for this if you are not up on this verbiage.)

Stross seems so in control and on top of his vision and the three central characters so sharply drawn that you are near the big finish before you know it, though you find the resolution a bit standard and ordinary when you were expecting something as fresh as the set-up.

In the end, you give it four stars but think that if you're a sci-fi buff you'd probably give it five.

Charles Stross is one of the best active SciFi authors today. His myriad series each have a unique voice, compelling story-lines and strong insights into the way technology shapes up. Stross' emphasis on the Singularity often gives his works a feeling that we're passengers on a wave which we can't see, but that doesn't stop us from paddling.

This book's precursor, [[ASIN:0441016073 Halting State (Ace Science Fiction)]], was a very near-future tale, showing the beginning of a world spiraling into something unrecognizable. Rule 34 loses a lot of that panicked sense of an inexorable drive towards the disturbingly unknowable, and in the end feels a lot more like it belongs to the less compelling universe of Cory Doctorow's '[[ASIN:B003VTZU1Q Makers]]', a future wherein cheap technology has crashed world economies and humanity is living a bleak, uninspired existence between the shadows of a comfortable past and a future that no one expects to show up anytime soon. It's a dismal world where everyone has internet access and 3-D printers, but no one feels alive. This would be fine, except the novel is styled as a procedural, and the ennui of the characters turns it into a procedural where no one does anything.

I don't regret reading this book, as Stross' writing is always sublime, however this is destined to be one of his lesser works.

I got this also because I wanted to know more. I think the entire series is just two books so it should be good at least. Great purchase.