The Quantum Thief

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By Hannu Rajaniemi

Publisher Description

“A stellar debut” with “elegant worldbuilding,” this sci-fi fantasy features a hunted thief challenged to complete a heist on Mars (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist, and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy—from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of Mars. Now he’s confined inside the Dilemma Prison, where every day he has to get up and kill himself before his other self can kill him.

Rescued by the mysterious Mieli and her flirtatious spacecraft, Jean is taken to the Oubliette, the Moving City of Mars, where time is currency, memories are treasures, and a moon-turned singularity lights the night. What Mieli offers is the chance to win back his freedom and the powers of his old self-in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed.

As Jean undertakes a series of capers on behalf of Mieli and her mysterious masters, elsewhere in the Oubliette investigator Isidore Beautrelet is called in to investigate the murder of a chocolatier, and finds himself on the trail of an arch-criminal, a man named le Flambeur. . . .

Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief is a crazy joyride through the solar system several centuries hence. But for all its wonders, it is also a story powered by very human motives of betrayal, revenge, and jealousy. It is a stunning debut.

“The next big thing in hard SF.” —Charles Stross, Hugo Award–winning author of the Laundry Files series

“Brilliant.” —John Clute

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213 Reviews

3.5

BiblioBecca 📚

Created 9 days ago

“Some books change your life, this one made me want to change hobbies. God, I truly hated this book, and not in a "this wasn't for me" way, but in a "how did this get published and why are people pretending it's genius?" kind of way. Okay, First things first, let's talk about the Jargon.Every other sentence is some made up work or concept with zero explanation. There's no glossary, no context just absolute nonsense. It reads like someone shook a thesaurus, a programming manual and a philosophy textbook into a blender and then poured that onto a page. Constantly. It's not smart, it's not clever, it's just exhausting THEN, THEN! There the POV Nightmare. You'll be midscene with Jean and then suddenly you're in Mieli's head, or Isidore's or some other character. With no warning. Add in a random mix of first and third person and it's just chaos, and not the fun kind. Honestly, this made me nostalgic for dental work, at least that has structure, and a point.. And now we get to my *favourite* part, the combat Autism. Yep. You read that right.. What is Combat Autism you ask?? Well.. in this universe one can simply choose to become Autistic for combat purposes, as it gives the character greater focus, without having to deal with those pesky emotions. Because obviously, being autistic means total emotional detachment and hyper efficiency.. right? Ugh. Gross. I was promised a Space Heist! Instead I got some tedious, self-important mess, that felt like a punishment. The kicker though? The high ratings.. WHAT THE F*CK. So many people calling it "High Concept" or some other pretentious drivel about it being "Too intellectual for your average reader". Yuck. I understood what was happening.. sure the commentary on privacy, memory and surveillance is there. I just know that the execution was terrible. Complexity isn't a free pass for incoherence. Sure.. there's some good ideas buried in here, but good writing should reveal those ideas, not bury them under 400 pages of nonsensical words. A good writer makes hard concepts compelling. This just made them unreadable. Thank God, that is over, I didn't just finish this book, I have escaped. Dobby is free.”

starsandsorcery

Created 13 days ago

Hummus

Created 2 months ago

“I don't know what happened in this book”

KMartVet

Created 3 months ago

“One of those books that throws you into the deep end—and all you can do is doggie-paddle through confusion and keep going. The book unapologetically drops you into a solar system full of bizarre, layered tech, fragmented time, and characters with encrypted memories. It’s disorienting, but also intriguing. You don’t always get what’s happening—but you still want to see what happens next. That’s kind of the charm, I think. The plot unravels with stylish flair—a mix of heist, identity mystery, and high-concept classic sci-fi philosophy—and the world-building is clever. And even when I didn’t like what was going on, I was never bored. Which says something. That said, it’s not without flaws. The female (or female-presenting) characters really didn’t hold up compared to their male counterparts. They felt underwritten and lacked the complexity that Jean le Flambeur and Isidore got to revel in. It was a disappointing oversight. So yeah, The Quantum Thief is sharp, eccentric, and genuinely entertaining, but it’s also not something I'll probably continue despite enjoying the voice. I'm content to leave the story there. It’s an impressive piece of science fiction—but one that I admired more than I loved.”

About Hannu Rajaniemi

Thirty-year-old HANNU RAJANIEMI is from Finland and lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he is a director of a think tank providing business services based on advanced math and artificial intelligence. He holds a Ph.D. in string theory and is a member of the same writing group that produced Hal Duncan. He wrote The Quantum Thief in English.