''The Fractal Prince'' is the second

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

novel by Hannu Rajaniemi and the second novel to feature the post-human

gentleman thief A gentleman thief, gentleman burglar, lady thief, or phantom thief is a stock character in fiction. A gentleman or lady thief is characterised by impeccable manners, charm, courteousness, and the avoidance of physical force or intimidation to ...

Jean le Flambeur. It was published in Britain by Gollancz in September 2012, and by

Tor Tor, TOR or ToR may refer to: Places * Tor, Pallars, a village in Spain * Tor, former name of Sloviansk, Ukraine, a city * Mount Tor, Tasmania, Australia, an extinct volcano * Tor Bay, Devon, England * Tor River, Western New Guinea, Indonesia Sc ...

in the same year in the US. The novel is the second in the

trilogy A trilogy is a set of three works of art that are connected and can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, and video games, and are less common in other art forms. Three-part wor ...

, following '' The Quantum Thief'' (2010) and preceding '' The Causal Angel'' (2014).

Plot summary

After the events of '' The Quantum Thief'', Jean le Flambeur and Mieli are on their way to Earth. Jean is trying to open the Schrödinger's Box he retrieved from the memory palace on the Oubliette. After making little progress, he is prodded by the ship '' Perhonen'' to talk to Mieli, who turns out to be possessed by the pellegrini again. This time, Jean identifies Mieli's employer as a Sobornost Founder, Joséphine Pellegrini, and gets her to reveal how he got captured, thereby picking up the clues to make plans for his next heist. No sooner is that done than an attack comes from the Hunter. The ship and crew barely survived that, and Jean realizes that he has to find a better way to open the Box - fast. Mieli has been very quiet after they left Mars. She has given up almost everything to the pellegrini, even her identity, as she has promised to let the pellegrini make gogols of her in exchange for rescuing the thief. Yet, having to work with the thief is testing her, especially when the thief eventually does something even more unforgivable than stealing Sydän's jewel from her. In the city of Sirr, on an Earth ravaged by wildcode, Tawaddud and Dunyazad are sisters and members of the powerful Gomelez family. Tawaddud is the black sheep of the family, having run away from her husband and consorted with a notorious jinn, a disembodied intelligence from the wildcode desert. Now Cassar Gomelez, her father, hopes to get her to curry favor with a gogol merchant,

Abu Nuwas Abū Nuwās al-Ḥasan ibn Hānī al-Ḥakamī (variant: Al-Ḥasan ibn Hānī 'Abd al-Awal al-Ṣabāḥ, Abū 'Alī (), known as Abū Nuwās al-Salamī () or just Abū Nuwās Garzanti ( ''Abū Nuwās''); 756814) was a classical Arabic poet, ...

, so that he has enough votes in the Council for the upcoming decision to renegotiate the Cry of Wrath Accords with the

Sobornost Sobornost ( rus, собо́рность, p=sɐˈbornəstʲ "spiritual community of many jointly-living people") is a Russian term whose usage is primarily attributed to the 19th-century Slavophile Russian writers Ivan Kireyevsky (1806-1856 ...

. Soon, Tawaddud is embroiled in an investigation with a Sobornost envoy into the murder that triggered the need for her father to forge a new alliance in the first place, and forced to confront old secrets that will change Sirr forever. Somewhere else, in a bookshop and on a beach, a young boy is at play. His mother has told him not to talk to strangers, but there has never been anyone here before. Until now. Should he talk to them?

Influences

In the acknowledgments, Rajaniemi cites the influence of "

Andy Clark Andy Clark, (born 1957) is a British philosopher who is Professor of Cognitive Philosophy at the University of Sussex. Prior to this, he was at professor of philosophy and Chair in Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh in Sc ...

, Douglas Hofstadter,

Maurice Leblanc Maurice Marie Émile Leblanc (; ; 11 December 1864 – 6 November 1941) was a French novelist and writer of short stories, known primarily as the creator of the fictional gentleman thief and detective Arsène Lupin, often described as a French c ...

Jan Potocki Count Jan Potocki (; 8 March 1761 – 23 December 1815) was a Polish nobleman, ethnologist, linguist, traveller and author of the Enlightenment period, whose life and exploits made him a celebrated figure in Poland. He is known chiefly for his pi ...

and ..''

The Arabian Nights ''One Thousand and One Nights'' ( ar, أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ, italic=yes, ) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the ''Arabian ...

''."

Self-loops

In the novel, the idea that the mind is a self-loop may have been influenced by the theories of the Professor of Philosophy, Andy Clark, and the book ''

I Am a Strange Loop ''I Am a Strange Loop'' is a 2007 book by Douglas Hofstadter, examining in depth the concept of a '' strange loop'' to explain the sense of "I". The concept of a ''strange loop'' was originally developed in his 1979 book '' Gödel, Escher, Bach' ...

'' by Douglas Hofstadter.

Frame stories

The novel uses

frame stories A frame is often a structural system that supports other components of a physical construction and/or steel frame that limits the construction's extent. Frame and FRAME may also refer to: Physical objects In building construction * Framing (c ...

rather extensively, a feature also of ''The Arabian Nights'' and Jan Potocki's

The Manuscript Found in Saragossa ''The Manuscript Found in Saragossa'' (; also known in English as ''The Saragossa Manuscript'') is a frame-tale novel written in French at the turn of 18th and 19th centuries by the Polish author Count Jan Potocki (1761–1815). It is narrated ...

. Several characters in Sirr are the namesakes of characters in these two earlier works as well. The events in '' The Quantum Thief'' are also retold at least once by Jean le Flambeur in the course of the events in this novel.

Reception

The novel has received generally positive reviews. However, criticisms of the novel still revolve around Rajaniemi's uncompromising "

show, don't tell Show, don't tell is a technique used in various kinds of texts to allow the reader to experience the story through actions, words, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than through the author's exposition, summarization, and description. It av ...

" style. For example, Amy Goldschlager, writing for the

Los Angeles Review of Books The ''Los Angeles Review of Books'' (''LARB'' is a literary review magazine covering the national and international book scenes. A preview version launched on Tumblr in April 2011, and the official website followed one year later in April 2012. ...

, suggested that " bit more explication of the physics involved (“surfing the deficit angle”?) would really be helpful, more helpful than the description of the Schrödinger’s Cat problem given earlier in the book".

Bibliography

* ''The Fractal Prince'', Hannu Rajaniemi: Gollancz, 2012, (paperback )

References

External links

*
Glossary for The Quantum Thief / The Fractal Prince / Jean le Flambeur
replacing the deleted Wikipedia glossary {{DEFAULTSORT:Fractal Prince, The 2012 American novels Novels by Hannu Rajaniemi 2012 science fiction novels Victor Gollancz Ltd books Quantum fiction novels Fiction about memory Finnish science fiction novels 21st-century Finnish novels Fiction about artificial intelligence Fiction about consciousness transfer Fiction about the Solar System Nanotechnology in fiction Fiction about megastructures Exploratory engineering Tor Books books