I finished Charles Stross’ most recent novel, Halting State, last night.  This is the third Stross book I’ve read in a row, and this novel reinforces my admiration for his writing.

Halting State takes place in the very near future – about the year 2025 in a newly-independent Scotland.  It’s a policing/detective novel of sorts, with an introductory whodunit that the main characters try to solve as the novel progresses.  The scene of the crime?  A massive MMORPG run by a shadowy gaming firm based in Edinburgh.  Someone has hacked into the game and stolen a truckload of virtual-reality goods that can be sold for real cash on eBay.

Of course with Stross, this is just the beginning of a massive web of intersections and extrapolations.  I won’t give too much away here.

After having read this novel, I continue to see two general weaknesses in Stross:

1. His characterization is often fairly flat.
2. His endings are rushed and/or tangential.

Stross tries hard to flesh out his protagonists – Jack Reed and Elaine Barnaby – but he’s no Pynchon.  There’s one particular backstory with Reed that in particular is supposed to get us to see deeper into Reed’s motivations, but I felt it was almost tacked on as an afterthought.  And the denouement is really a birds’ nest of intertwining threads that he tries – and almost succeeds – in wrapping up neatly.  Almost.

So – enough with the criticisms.  I actually loved Halting State.  I would recommend it to any sci-fi fan.  It’s not quite the book that Accelerando is, but that’s saying a lot.  Accelerando is up there in my “book of the year” lists.

One final nitpick: I started reading this novel with the hopes that Stross would explore the term “halting state” as used near the end of Accelerando – that is, a mental or cognitive block that affects wetware.  This novel didn’t really get into AI much at all, so I was left wanting.