Belisarius Arjona was taught by a con man that there are only three bets: "Sometimes, you play the cards. Sometimes, you play the player. Sometimes, you just throw the dice."

Well, as the Quantum Magician, Bel played all three simultaneously in the ultimate con. For you see, Bel is a Homo quantus, born from a scientific project founded upon the precept that consciousness collapses quantum systems into clear outcomes, as epitomised by Schrodinger's cat. A Homo quantus brain has been engineered at will to discard the consciousness and subjectivity, to enter into a quantum fugue that does not collapse the quantum phenomena and thereby exposes an array of overlapping probabilities.

So begins the ultimate heist wherein he assembles a disparate team consisting of an experienced con man, inside man, demolitions expert, navigator, electronics wizard, exotic deep diver and a geneticist.

I really enjoyed the diverseness of advanced life from the loathsome Puppets and Numen, sentient AI, the Tribe of the Mongrel, to my absolute favourite, Homo quantus.

An eclectic cast of characters in a hard sci-fi setting where there is always a con. If you think that you know what is going on, you have no idea. If you have no idea, then you are right where you should be.

An imaginative, well realised world inhabiting by the most unique characters that we revile and adore, all at the same time.

Highly recommended for any sci-fi lovers wanting to read something very different.

Sorry but I had to give up on this book. I really do enjoy both science fiction and fantasy but just not this example of the genre. Too many potatoes and not enough meat! A great concept that drowned in words until, in my head at least, that concept vanished - into a worm-hole?

Gave up after 100 pages and im surprised i lasted that long frankly. One of the slowest most boring books ive ever read in my life. I have gotten to the point where the magician has discovered that they are hiding a miniature worm hole on one of the ships and can use it to go backwards and forwards in time. The thought was too ludicrous to entertain, nobody could ever contain a blackhole inside a spaceship. I may give it another go later when ive read the 20 books ive got waiting to be read, but for now i do not have the willpower to keep reading it.

Top-notch space opera from a first-time novelist. Hard to believe this is his first, because it's somewhat complex and very well-developed. He uses a technique to start the novel that I usually enjoy seeing when it shows up - he starts off with a brief episode unrelated to the larger work, just to give some background on the main character. It doesn't appear to be a reused short story, either. After reading this section, I thought we might be up for The Sting In Space. After the opening ends, however, it started to look more like Ocean's 11 In Space, as the protagonist goes around gathering his old cronies to assist him with this "quantum" con. This works well, as we get to meet and know each of them in sufficient depth to place them into the context of the greater story. He makes most of them unique, and he does a good job of showing them relating to each other. They stay in character as they do, and several of them grow and change as the plot unfolds. I was so caught up getting to know the characters as they started their various preparations for the con that I was a couple pages into its execution before I realized IT'S GOING DOWN NOW.

Who' are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? What's the real con - the one we're told about or something else entirely? Is that "throwaway" story at the beginning relevant to the plot? You'll have to read to find out!

This is a novel about science and factions and scheming and treachery and a heist, which sounds like fun, and it is, but it's also an intense read. This is no beach novel. The detailed science slowed me down, as did following the many different plot threads, but ultimately it was worth it for a smart and satisfying ending. There's so much in this, from the various factions of humans to their often similar but opposing goals. Most authors would have got about four books out of this one. That said, the worldbuilding is deep enough I can imagine this is the first of many.

This is a whip-smart hard sci-fi heist with the smarts of Oceans 11 and the heart of The Italian Job.

My background in quantum theory consists of understanding about one sentence in three in the quantum theory chapter of <i>Goedel, Escher, Bach</i> (which I thought was reasonably good going). And that was some years ago, so I am far from qualified to talk about the physics of this book.

That didn't matter to my enjoyment of the story; I just took the various bits of esoteric physics as sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic, and concentrated on following the complicated heist.

I do enjoy a good heist, and this is definitely one. There's the "assembling the team" sequence, the planning, the mini-heists gathering resources, the things that go wrong, getting in, getting out, the moments when we learn about plans beneath plans, the team member who betrays the crew... all the classic elements are here. I will say that I could have done with more clarity about exactly why the client needed the mastermind's help, and the topology of the journey they were trying to make, but even though it wasn't really clear to me until late in the piece where they were, where they wanted to be, and how the two were connected, I enjoyed the ride.

The characters all tend towards the haunted, miserable end of things, though not all of them are without idealism or a higher purpose. And the Puppets (genetically engineered miniature humans created to have a reaction of religious awe towards the people who created them, who have turned on those people and imprisoned them in order to protect them) creeped me all the way out; that was a nasty situation, complete with torture and abuse, and I personally could have done without it. I also didn't love the foul-mouthed genetically engineered undersea being. But I can admire an author's skill without enjoying all the things he does with it, and the whole complex book was managed with great skill - and came to a conclusion that I found satisfying, in the end.

I received a copy from Netgalley for purposes of review. The author and I both participate in the same writers' forum, which is how I became aware of the book.

Some books you know almost immediately aren’t going to work for you. And yet the obsessive compulsive reader might feel compelled to finish them anyway. And that kinda sucks. And yes, I am such a reader, a completist by nature. And this one had such a promising premise and title and turned out to be such a chore to get through. From page one it was just too…sciency, for the lack of a more appropriate word. Sure it is science fiction, some science is to be expected, but this was positively overloaded with the techy aspects, so that it was in fact top heavy. But the time you get to the bottom, fiction in this case, you’re tired and kind of indifferent. In fact it wasn’t until about quarter of the way in that the plot actually got interesting enough to engage me. And actually the character writing was very good and the characters themselves, particularly the terrifically belligerent Stills, were pretty great. The plot itself involved a sort of intergalactic con job on a huge scale. That also worked. So that basically edited in a different way, slimmed down, trimmed down, this would have been lots of fun. Instead it was a dense plodding slog through space time continuum that took sheer will power and effort to finish. Thanks Netgalley.

5-Stars! Outrageously Imaginative!

Delicious hard science, even to the mysteries of quantum unknowns, quantum possibilities. Great prose, fabulous characters, far better than any "Oceans 11" rip-off you could imagine. Rigorously founded in real science, and extrapolating wonderfully into sci-fi; I'm happy to watch various physical laws be broken now and then for such a great heist plot!

As usual with my reviews, please first read the publisher’s blurb/summary of the book. Thank you.

Some amazing world-building here, and the relationship between the "Puppet" race of humans and their "Divine" masters, the Numen, is extraordinary. I’ve never read such an incredible master-slave-race construct before.

This is a heist story, with each extraordinary character fulfilling a role in the crime, each one amazing and full-bodied in behaviour and thought. The heist barrels along, with unexpected but quite plausible twists and turns, and rockets to a dramatic and satisfying climax.

Perhaps the last 20% of the book could do with tighter editing, a bit more clarity. The pace is so high and the sci-fi quantum spiel is perhaps a bit too complex for this ending. But that’s a minor quibble to a truly extraordinary book. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

--


Belisarius sold legal and illegal Puppet art and was curating the first exposition permitted by the Theocracy. Smell, lighting and sound influenced the aesthetic of Puppet religious experience, and for the exposition, Belisarius had laced the lobby with the faint citrus odor of Puppet sweat.

Quantum Qutrits ... Very, very esoteric!



Bel considers the Union request -
They were going to die. They were all going to die if they faced the Congregate navy, and they needed him to get to a place where they could die.


The Inspiration of Saint Matthew, by Caravaggio


Saint Matthew was probably the most sophisticated AI in civilization, the first of the long-sought Aleph-class of AIs being developed with the considerable resources of the First Bank of the Plutocracy.


Bel considers cards and gambling -
Cards possessed a kind of purity. The apparent evenness of the probability was Platonically untouchable. Politics, violence, foolishness, poverty and wealth meant nothing to probability.

(a random card magician picture, apologies to Kevin McMahon)


As intelligence was an emergent property of life, so games of controlled chance were an emergent property of intelligence. Intellect was an adaptive evolutionary structure, allowing humanity not only to sense the world in space, but to predict future events through time. Games of chance tested that predictive machine—so much so that games of controlled chance discriminated consciousness from unconsciousness far better than Turing.

Artist's concept of a quantum wave function ...



Marie the explosives expert -
“Happy for help,” Marie said, looking at them, wriggling her fingers. “This’ll be a three-or four-finger job.”
Gates-15 frowned at her. “What’s a three-finger job?”
“It’s how many fingers get blown off before I get it right. It’s way easier if we spread that around. Many hands make light the work,” she said cheerily.


click here for: Underwater Explosion at 120,000 FPS

A.I. Saint Matthew -
What if I’m the tool by which He actually ensouls machines? That would certainly force us to redefine the role of humanity in His plan. Imagine if humanity was just scaffolding for the creation and ensoulment of machines.”


Cassandra ponders love -
[Bel] smiled. And some of the weight on her chest lessened, until she realized that his smile was a lie, to make her feel better, and that only a month ago, she wouldn’t have known the difference between a smile and its imitation.

(just a lovely thought)



Notes:

3.0% ... pretty good so far.

6.0% ... wow, delicious hard science, virtual particles and such. The prose is very good, so good you happily ignore the violation of thermodynamics.

20.0% ... very clever and literate.

39.0% .... the plot deliciously thickens!

50.0% ...
Risk and daring were a matter of calculation and feel, forceful attacks and timely folding, and lacing every choice with misdirection.

51.0% ... another fabulous plot twist.

59.0% ... wow, Puppet worship of Numen is really creepy, repulsive.

74.0%
Intelligence was the first sense to see through time instead of space.

76.0% ... the Numen-Puppet relationship is unlike anything I've ever read before in science fiction.

96% ... word should be "precessing"
She measured her rotational speed and angular momentum against the stars, solving the differential equations to know how to extend her arms and legs to spin without processing.

really liked this book. The initial setup was a little confusing, but the interweaving of characters and plot-lines was very well done.

The book revolves around the evolution of humanity and the usual domination and subjugation of one group over another. All this plays out via a heist and a conman with unusual abilities....The setting is not unique, a group of mercenaries that don't really fit, but grow together. But the plot is very engaging and there are enough twists and turns for anyone to get whiplash.

For tech nerds, there is enough quantum theory and advanced technology to keep you busy for a while.

The ending was complete enough to tie the caper together, but there's enough unfinished business to suggest future tales in this universe.

I don't want to spoil the voyage of discovery, so dive in and see for yourself.

Slightly harder work than I had hoped to get into the right mindset to read this book. It took a couple of tries.
That being said, clever and unique worldbuilding. The morally grey character makes for an interesting protagonist, with the sci-fi setting giving a nice difference to the more common Urban Fantasy protagonist (Sandman Slim, etc)
I would steer fans of cyberpunk towards this title, more that space opera fans.