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The Fractal Prince Paperback – September 27, 2012
A physicist receives a mysterious paper. The ideas in it are far, far ahead of current thinking and quite, quite terrifying. In a city of “fast ones,” shadow players, and jinni, two sisters contemplate a revolution.
And on the edges of reality a thief, helped by a sardonic ship, is trying to break into a Schrödinger box for his patron. In the box is his freedom. Or not.
Jean de Flambeur is back. And he’s running out of time.
In Hannu Rajaniemi’s sparkling follow-up to the critically acclaimed international sensation The Quantum Thief, he returns to his awe-inspiring vision of the universe…and we discover what the future held for Earth.
- Print length300 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherGollancz
- Publication dateSeptember 27, 2012
- Dimensions6.02 x 0.94 x 9.13 inches
- ISBN-100575088923
- ISBN-13978-0575088924
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Product details
- Publisher : Gollancz (September 27, 2012)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 300 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0575088923
- ISBN-13 : 978-0575088924
- Item Weight : 14.9 ounces
- Dimensions : 6.02 x 0.94 x 9.13 inches
- Customer Reviews:
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La structure du récit est semblable, en apparence, à celle du premier tome et on va suivre deux arcs narratifs en parallèle, avant qu’ils ne fassent plus qu’un aux deux tiers du livre.
D'un côté, Jean le Flambeur s’est échappé de la cité Martienne Oubliette en laissant derrière lui une partie de sa mémoire, pour s’envoler à bord du Perhonen vers la Terre en compagnie de la guerrière Oortienne Mieli et sous la surveillance étroite de Joséphine Pellegrini. Il a tout de même récupéré la boîte de Schrödinger, une technologie Zoku enfermant un dieu, c’est-à-dire en fait un des fondateurs du Sorbornost. S’il parvient à ouvrir la boîte, il disposera alors d’un moyen d’accéder aux autres fondateurs.
L'autre côté, se déroule sur Terre. La Terre telle qu’elle se présente est radicalement différente de celle que nous connaissons. Notre guide dans ce monde post-apocalyptique aux saveurs orientales est un personnage tout-à-fait extraordinaire qui vole la vedette du livre : Tawaddud, aussi appelée celle qui aimait les monstres, ou encore la p u t a i n de l’Axolotl. Tawaddud Gomenez est la fille d’un des nobles qui dirigent la cité, une mystique qui connait des Noms Secrets puissants, qui guérissent, protègent ou tuent, une jeune femme dont les connivences avec les esprits qui habitent ce monde la placent dangereusement près de la voie de la répudiation. Elle va être plongée dans les méandres de la politique terrienne par son père et sa sœur, face aux Hsien-kus et au Sobonost qui œuvrent à reprendre possession de la planète.
Au final, j’ai trouvé que The Fractal Prince était encore mieux que The Quantum Thief. Plus beau, plus grand, plus ambitieux. Je n’ai pas tout compris. Notamment, je ne suis pas du tout sûr de ce qui arrive à la Terre à la fin du livre. Mais je suis persuadé que les choses s’éclaireront dans le troisième et dernier tome de la série, The Causal Angel.
Vous pouvez lire une critique plus détaillée sur mon blog dont le lien se trouve sur mon profil.
That makes it sound as though the story is just more of the same: a murder mystery and a caper, folded with mind-bending, almost incomprehensible hard-SF technology (none of it explained even in passing) and a tangle of motivations, both human and post human. And one can enjoy it at that level, watching the strangeness unfold and admiring Rajaniemi's command of the science, the breadth of his conception, his sheer breakneck imagination. The nature of the characters, in particular, encourages this. Almost all are instances (sometimes, multiple instances) of original individuals, incarnated into more or less techologically advanced artificial "bodies" for various purposes. (Rajaniemi's far future seems to follow the same logic as, for example, Charles Stross's Saturn's Children - intelligences cannot be artificial as such, but must be developed/ grown as human though they may then be duplicated, rehosted and augmented on non-biological hardware. A fair bit of the plot is concerned with accessing such stored "souls" - "gogols" - which are then traded as a commodity). Personality blurs - both for the "humans" and the godlike Sobernost - as does reality, which fractures into a succession of virtual worlds within worlds. In the end, it's not possible to say for sure who did what. I'm not even sure the question makes sense. So it's tempting just to hang on for the ride, as it were, without trying to understand too much.
However, I think that if you focus back from the detail - look at the wood rather than the trees, perhaps - a narrative is emerging, weaving together the early history of Jean himself, the pellegrini and the fate of Earth, all bound up with the intrigues of the godlike Sobernost. The latter - the vasilievs, the chens, the pellegrinis - are one of the best done parts of the book with the rivalries and jealousies of these supposedly higher intelligences resembling nothing as much as ancient myth, where gods with awesome powers but no commensurate sense of morality, responsibility, or proportion play power games with feeble humans. ("As flies to wanton boys so we are to the gods/ They kill us for their sport").
I suspect the book will divide readers. For me, it was exhilarating. If you want something where you can grasp each bit of detail before moving to the next, you may find it frustrating.