43) Halting State, by Charles Stross

And so I start my reading of this year's Hugo nominees (and am also now nearly finished Brasyl). I really enjoyed it a lot, though admittedly not every reader's experience will be enhanced as mine was by discussing bits of background for the sequel with the author over the weekend. It's a melding of genres, police procedural and cyberpunk, set in the Edinburgh of an independent Scotland in a few years' time. The narrative voice is striking - three different viewpoint characters, but all told in the second person, as (quite deliberately) in a computer game. There are nods to all kinds of sf taproot texts, and an unnerving background theme of questioning reality. And Charlie's prose seems somehow more under control than I can remember from any of his other books. My Hugo reading is off to a good start.