Well I’m continuing my reading journey. With a few exceptions here and there, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m basically reading the Hugo nominees. I wasn’t a regular reader for a number of years, but the past couple years of regular usage of the public library has both made me a huge supporter of our public library system in this country (and I think it’s criminal that we’re reducing it’s funds, when they require so little, and help so many) as well as a voracious reader.

To catch up, I’m still waiting for most of the 2010 Hugo nominees to be more readily available. I’ve only read one of them so far, Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd Century America by Robert Charles Wilson, which I really enjoyed (but never reviewed).

I’ve finished up my 2009′s having decided that I’m not so much upset that Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book won the Hugo, but that Neal Stephenson’s Anathem didn’t tie. It feels like in 20 years people will still want to be picking up Anathem, but The Graveyard Book might be more likely to slip into obscurity. I dunno.

So I’m now moving back in time (I know on io9 there is a guy moving forward, but I tried reading some of the older hugos, and so many of them are bad….just bad) and i’m on 2008. So far I’ve read 3 of them.

The Last Colony by John Scalzi, which I loved, but I love Scalzi’s writing. He’s probably my favorite current author, and I’ve read everything he’s written.

Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer. It was not terrible. I liked the concept, and Sawyer is a really good and clean writer that is easy for me to read. His writing is so… Canadian… Though this story just didn’t feel like one of his best. Hominids for instance from 2003 was far superior.

And now I’ve read Halting State by Charles Stross, which I’ll review shortly.

(I still have to read Ian McDonald’s Brasyl which i’m looking forward to, and then the winner from 2008 The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon, which I’m not looking forward to….Not a fan of Chabon’s writing style.)

So Halting State. It’s interesting, because it feels like it’s in a very similar universe to the one that Vernor Vinge laid out in the 2007 Hugo winner Rainbows End (Ok so i’m reading all over the place, I’ve read alot of the winners from past years, sue me). It’s a world of the near future, that you can almost grasp as being possible in 10-20 years. Glasses with HUD overlays and different virtual realities laying on top of our own. “Copspace” which only police can see which puts information about people they look at in their heads up, or over buildings, or trouble in the distance etc. Subtle additions to the world that make sense, without totally obliterating the world we’re in now. It makes for an interesting, and realistic view of the future, one neither utopian or dystopian. One that is all the shades of grey of today, just with better video games, and cars that have computers that drive them for you.

The story itself is somewhat interesting, involving a ‘break in’ of a virtual bank, with bread crumbs leading to international cyber warfare, and criminal stock manipulation, etc, etc. My problem with the book though was that the story was hard to get at, mostly because of the way it was written.

Charles Stross. He’s a better writer than I’ll ever be, and his books work my brain harder than some, but I still enjoy what I’ve seen so far. Saturn’s Children from 2009 was hard for me to jump into, but once I adjusted to his writing style, and the radically different world, I really liked the book, and I’d say the same for this one, but about 50% less.

See Halting State is written in the 2nd person.

Most people kind of stare at you when you say something like that in real life. “What do you mean?”

I mean that the whole book consists of three different characters and each chapter it’s in the second person of THAT character.

So you’d have “Chapter 2: Sue Reads a Blog”

You are still rubbing the wetness from your hair, wrapped in the far too white to be natural towels the hotel has provided for you, when you sit down at the mahogany desk to check your email. You impatiently tap the space bar to wake up the laptop, and look to your left out the window at the morning sun filling the streets.

etc (that was me writing an example, not an excerpt)

It was jarring. Both just to read a fictional story set in the future in 2nd person, as well as having that second person change from character to character, particularly when two of them were working closely together, and you could easily get confused as to what was what, and have to turn back to the chapter head to see who you’re currently inhabiting.

Maybe if it was in 3rd person it would have been a more boring book. I don’t know. I just think that being in 2nd person felt like it took away from the whole thing, and was just…. uncomfortable and unweidly.

Kudos for trying it I guess.

Which brings me to my second complaint. This book, like Saturn’s Children, also has a very quick wrap up. There’s not really any epilogue or anything. You’ll have 300 pages of introducing the world, and building up characters and a plot, and then 10 pages of plot resolution, and done. Halting State along with Saturn’s Children feel like they wrapped up very fast, overly fast even. Maybe that’s more realistic to the way the world works, but neither were particularly gripping to get to, ie they weren’t very climactic climaxes, and then the books were just over.

Maybe that’s just his style. They’re still good books, it just feels like more climactic climaxes would improve his book, and not have them end as soon as the climax is done.

Anyway. I’d give it 3 stars out of 5. If it weren’t in 2nd person I’d push it up to 4 stars, I just had trouble with that. I can see why it was a nominated book, but at the same time I’m somewhat surprised. It feels like it could have been so much better.

Up next….Well don’t hate me, but I’m skipping back to 2007 and staying with Charles Stross because i’m curious now if all his books  are this way (complex and well written, with quick resolutions and climaxes at the end) so back to Glasshouse by Charles Stross nominated for the 2007 Hugo (which lost to Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End).