The Quantum Thief was amazing. I went into this book knowing absolutely nothing about what I should expect – a lot of the charm of The Quantum Thief was all about figuring out how the world works, while also keeping up with the absolute power and momentum of the characters involved – gods, gods who didn’t know they were gods, their toys, their toys about to kill some gods, and so on.
The Fractal Prince was … not terrible? It introduces another world for us to figure out, but we know so much of the background already that the story gets bogged down between a) figuring out the local mystery and how it fits into the larger picture, and b) making us guess what the inscrutable infinitely tricky gods of this world are planning in their multiple-personality war (which I didn’t even attempt to solve, because it felt intentionally obscured). I did enjoy the backstory parts! But other than that, this book was a very pleasant drag.
This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.
