Halting State

Locations
Call Number: Science Fiction
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Science Fiction	4-week checkout	On Shelf

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Library Journal Review
Booklist Review
Publishers Weekly Review
Summary / Annotation
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

HALTING STATE by Charles Stross submitted by wfzimmerman on October 4, 2007, 9:23am Very clever near-future espionage SF. Quite a bit of wish fulfilment going on as the novel is set entirely in an indepenedent Scotland and US is irrelevant to Stross's future EU - CHina conflict. Rather surprisingly for someone of Stross's intelligence the CHinese are treated as one-dimensional bogeymen, an almost Sax Rohmeresque approach.

Good book with a few superficial hurdles. submitted by eknapp on January 8, 2012, 11:31am Halting State purports to be a gamer novel (a la Ready Player One) but it's actually more of a near-future tech thriller with a side of politics.

It opens with the Scottish police being called in to solve a sort-of bank robbery in which a horde of orcs (with dragon support) have looted a virtual bank in a World of Warcraft style VR game. Before long it morphs into spy-vs-spy suspense with the financial security of the world at stake.

I had a tough time plowing through some of the Scottish. I'm generally pretty good at extracting meaning from context, but I was stumped a few times here (Bampots? Neds? Chilblains, nonce, bairns?) and even the words I solved were interruptive.

Another hurdle was the point-of-view: this is the first book I've ever read told from SECOND person (through the eyes of three POV characters). It took some getting used to, but I stopped noticing it after a while.

All told it was a solidly entertaining read. The tech and spycraft were believable (to my layman's ear); the author appeared to know his stuff. And the epilogue was really funny, a nice touch.

Just OK submitted by Jen Chapin-Smith on August 23, 2012, 4:00pm I didn't enjoy "The Halting State" nearly as much as Charles Stross' "The Laundry" series. This may be because it is not nearly as funny as his Laundry books because "The Halting State" is really for computer game enthusiasts, which I'm not. However, those who enjoy computer games, hacking and online role-playing games, will probably like this one. The prose written to immitate the sound of the Scotish accent can make it hard to understand what the characters are saying. I did appreciate the positive and nonchalant treatment of a gay character.

You have to be a gamer/geek to understand submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on August 12, 2018, 1:53pm It's really good, but here's the thing with this book: It's written for gamers and geeks. It presumes more than a passing familiarity with role playing games (RPGs), massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORGS), and all kinds of stuff that programmers find the stuff of life. Because of my partner I know enough about both to enjoy the story (though a glossary would be helpful for all the terms Stross either never defines or only spells out once), though I'm sure there's a ton that I'm missing.

It's also written in second person, though from three different characters' viewpoints. ("You don't remember anything about the armchair before you woke up in it.") It was weird, I don't see the value of it, and it was really distracting for a while, though I eventually got used to it.

So if you game or program, I'd highly recommend this book. Otherwise, it's interesting but an awful lot of work.