HALTING STATE by Charles Stross

Narrated by Robert Ian MacKenzie

     Tame Police Procedural

I failed to engage with this novel at even the most superficial level so as to be able to follow the story. I blame myself. I did listen to the entire novel and even started the sequel before punching out on the series. It is in that frame of mind that I write this review. When I started the book, I was excited to discover another novel exploring the concept of virtual reality—hopefully in the nerdy vein of Daniel Suarez’ DAEMON, Ernest Cline’s READY PLAYER ONE, or Neal Stephenson’s SNOW CRASH. But this book is more of a police procedural, going about solving a crime that just happens to have taken place in cyber-space, and not at all an attempt to give the listener a sense of immersion into a virtual world.

The decision of the author Charles Stross to tell the tale in second person is—intentionally or not—disorienting and distancing and therefore not entirely successful. There is no identifiable protagonist, or maybe there is a new main character in every chapter. I am confused.  Each chapter is told from the view-point of a different character and the second person “you” forces the listener to constantly change perspective and, on this audiobook, if you aren’t paying close attention at the start of each new section, you don’t know who “you” are supposed to be. More than once I did not know if “I” was supposed to be experiencing the story through the eyes of a woman until “I” reached for “my” lipstick. I think that this second person narration was the biggest obstacle preventing me from engaging with the novel.

When I first began the book I was thrilled to hear the heavy Scottish brogue of Robert Ian MacKenzie. It reminded me of Monty Python. In fact the reading is so Pythonesque as to be a distraction. I just couldn’t take the book seriously. I did keep listening until the end because MacKenzie is easy on the ears and some of his pronunciations are worth a rewind. But his accent amounts to what I can only label a language barrier. So, the heavy Scottish accent, the second persond narration, and the rather tame approach to virtual reality resulted in a dissatisfying time for me.

As to the plot—I gather that there has been some sort of cyber crime, committed within a massive multi-player online game. Now, as to how they go about investigating the crime and whether or not they solved it, don’t ask me. After listening to the whole book,  I honestly cannot give you a single one of the character’s names or recount for you even the most simplistic outline of the story. That is how detached I was from this book.