Halting State (Charles Stross)

I liked it, and I lived in Edinburgh. Graham may have a point...

I liked the style of writing (contrary to Graham's comment). I also love some of the near-future ideas. Great ideas but yeah, a bit computery-geeky.

I enjoyed this but there were a few too many faults for me to be able to give it any more than three stars. For a start, it was just a bit too much of a male, geek fantasy for my liking with this strange near future world in which computer programming and role playing suddenly become the most important skills needed to get the girl and save the world.

I also felt the second person narrative style was wasted here as it really could just as easily been written in first or third person. In fact the fact that Jack has an (admittedly really obvious) secret that proves to be important when it's revealed at the end is really annoying when reading in the second person because you're in essence being asked to accept a big secret that, as the actual protagonist, you should have known from the start.

Beyond that it was good fun but I imagine it's unlikely to find much of an audience outside hard core science fiction readers or computer programmers (or possibly also people who live in Edinburgh). It was just a bit too acronym and technical term heavy to appeal to a wider audience.