Doctorow Reviews Stross’ Halting State


The premise is kind of neat, involving a bank heist in an MMORPG.

Charlie Stross’s latest novel Halting State starts out as a hilarious post-cyberpunk police procedural, turns into a gripping post-cyberpunk technothriller, and escalates into a Big Ideas book about the future of economics, virtual worlds, the nation state and policing, while managing to crack a string of geeky in-jokes, play off a heaping helping of gripping action scenes, and telling a pretty good love story.

Here’s the rest of the review.