I accidentally bought Halting State instead of another one and you know what? I loved it. What we have here is a well-written whodunit in near future that rings a little too close to home for comfort.
It's 2018 and augmented reality is, well, a reality. China, India, and the EU are in the midst of waging a never ending infowar, while the United States is rendered obsolete by the crumbling of its aging data infrastructure. Oh, and Scotland has its independence and is a full EU member.
Against this backdrop, Edinburgh cop Sgt. Sue Smith gets pulled into an investigation involving the bank heist of an on-line game. Seems that Orks from an entirely different game, show up in another game's bank and made off with a small fortune of in-game magic items. Stuff like that is not supposed to happen. This theft of 1s and 0s equates to several million Euro. Turns out, it's not just items in a game's database that have been compromised.
If it sounds similar to REAMDE, that's only because they both feature an online game as its backdrop. That is where the similarities end.
One quirk about this book that you should know is that it is told in second person from the perspective of either Sue, Elaine, or Jack. It works well for this story.
Oh, and beer good: there are ample references to Lovecraftian horrors, including a game based on At The Mountains of Madness.
It's 2018 and augmented reality is, well, a reality. China, India, and the EU are in the midst of waging a never ending infowar, while the United States is rendered obsolete by the crumbling of its aging data infrastructure. Oh, and Scotland has its independence and is a full EU member.
Against this backdrop, Edinburgh cop Sgt. Sue Smith gets pulled into an investigation involving the bank heist of an on-line game. Seems that Orks from an entirely different game, show up in another game's bank and made off with a small fortune of in-game magic items. Stuff like that is not supposed to happen. This theft of 1s and 0s equates to several million Euro. Turns out, it's not just items in a game's database that have been compromised.
If it sounds similar to REAMDE, that's only because they both feature an online game as its backdrop. That is where the similarities end.
One quirk about this book that you should know is that it is told in second person from the perspective of either Sue, Elaine, or Jack. It works well for this story.
Oh, and beer good: there are ample references to Lovecraftian horrors, including a game based on At The Mountains of Madness.
