Reading HaltinG StatE

It's spring break, time to relax and enjoy a bit of non-school reading. I've had Charles Stross's book HaltinG StatE (that title's no typo) on my table for a long time and decided to start reading it. Stross is a Scotsman and a writer of good hard SF (and some fantasy that I haven't read)

This book is a bit different from his earlier works like Singularity Sky and Accelerando, which I read and thoroughly enjoyed. It's set in an independent Scotland in the near future. The book was hard for me to get into at first. It's multiple points-of-view, second-person, were confusing. The early chapters were full of Scottishisms and Britishisms, foreign acronyms, local history in-jokes, and computer science tech words that were over my head and slowed my comprehension to a crawl. There wasn't much action in these early character-establishing chapters either.

If not for my earlier experiences with Stross, I probably would have put the book down. But I hung in, and things started to get interesting as an investigation into a cybercrime (the robbery of a virtual gaming bank) started waves rippling in the wider world. Now that I'm more than half-way into the book, I'm hooked on it, and learning a lot about the computer and gaming world that Stross is so expert in.

If you are a technophile, a mystery buff, or interested in near future predictions, you'll probably be as interested in the book as I am. It's a strong Idea novel, with good characterization, though I still don't understand the reason for the second-person p.o.v.--it's an unnecessary affectation, IMHO. I'll let you know when I finish it if its worth putting on your summer reading list.