Pentapod reviewed Halting State (Halting State, #1) by Charles Stross
A fully second-person novel
3 stars
This is very odd to read as it's written entirely in the second person, despite switching between a few main characters. Interesting experiment but for an entire novel it's a bit tiring. It was written in 2007 and deals with a heist involving online computer games; and while Stross evidently had some experience with computer games at the time, and while I have seen far worse mistakes made by the likes of Gibson and Stephenson, nonetheless even with the most generous suspension of disbelief I really struggled with some of the "technical details" (since I personally have worked making online computer games since 2007, and know exactly why some of these things don't, or couldn't possibly, work that way). Still, if you aren't personally bothered by those details it's a decent plot - as long as you can wrap your head around the second person. Overall it was quite a …
This is very odd to read as it's written entirely in the second person, despite switching between a few main characters. Interesting experiment but for an entire novel it's a bit tiring. It was written in 2007 and deals with a heist involving online computer games; and while Stross evidently had some experience with computer games at the time, and while I have seen far worse mistakes made by the likes of Gibson and Stephenson, nonetheless even with the most generous suspension of disbelief I really struggled with some of the "technical details" (since I personally have worked making online computer games since 2007, and know exactly why some of these things don't, or couldn't possibly, work that way). Still, if you aren't personally bothered by those details it's a decent plot - as long as you can wrap your head around the second person. Overall it was quite a struggle for me, YMMV.
