Reviews
“The big ideas keep piling up as you dive deeper and deeper into this first novel: a city that marches across the Martian desert; a cloud of universally accessible data called ‘exomemory’ that floats in the air around people, places and things; a quantum-jail; interpersonal communication re-imagined as a dense network of negotiable privacy settings; the individual minutes of a person’s life used as legal tender. But the accrued weight of all of these notions never slows The Quantum Thief’s pace, because the engine Finnish author Hannu Rajaneimi uses to drive his narrative is a good, old-fashioned heist plot: A charming thief is rescued from prison by powerful, possibly sinister beings and forced to find a mysterious treasure he stole in one of his past lives. As he attempts to decipher the clues left by his past self, a young amateur detective stumbles on his trail. It’s a thoughtful, stylish, wryly funny debut.”—NPR
No precis does justice to Rajaniemi’s unique, post-singularity vision…A brilliant debut. —The Guardian
“The Quantum Thief is many things at once: a brazen sound-and-light show of visionary ideas, a posthuman meditation on very human themes, an exercise in intricate worldbuilding, and a rollickingly good crime caper.” —The New York Review of Science Fiction
“Spectacularly and convincingly inventive, assured and wholly spellbinding: one of the most impressive debuts in years.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“A stellar debut.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Outstanding…A storytelling skill rarely found from even the most experienced authors. Rajaniemi belongs in a class with Gene Wolfe and Samuel Delany.”—Library Journal, starred review
“The Quantum Thief made the hair on the back of my neck stand up when I read it, and I think Hannu’s going to revolutionize hard SF.” —Charles Stross
“Many an anglophone author would kill to turn out prose half as good as this.” —The Financial Times
“Great fun… In the end, it may not matter how much one actually gets out of any single predatory slamdunk eyekick…Their excellent profusion increasingly, as one continues to read, gives joy.” —John Clute
“Beneath the science, you see, beneath the staggering speculative wonder of it all, Hannu Rajaniemi has a knack for spare, no-nonsense storytelling that approaches the poetic at times. The Quantum Thief is a revelation.” —The Speculative Scotsman
“Rajaniemi has spectacularly delivered on the promise that this is likely to be the most important SF novel we’ll see this year.” —Locus
