The Fractal Prince is incredibly bold in terms of formal experimentation, it holds true to the promise of its title and this alone makes the novel one of the most interesting reads of the year. He is no Nabokov as of yet, but who knows where his craft will lead him. On the contrary, I think his talent has a lot of space to grow, his skills could be even sharper, the writing more profound.
I don’t mean to suggest that Rajaniemi has already peaked as an author and his writing is a thesaurus of perfection. It is a labyrinth and a room full of mirrors where you can easily lose yourself (occasionally even your self) and where subliminal glimpses of massive creatures moving hidden underneath the surface will startle you, grand colorful illusions will dazzle, memes will burrow and most of what you know will be revealed as nothing more than shifting sands. The story is involved to the point of obfuscation, but each day I would sink effortlessly into its winding ways and half an hour later would pop out of the underground, one or more self-contained stories sparkling like exotic jewels in my mind. It is pretty short as novels go and yet it feels vast, infinite even. The follow-up to The Quantum Thief is full of such curiosities. Anything inducing such paradoxical states of mind must be more than just good. Or maybe trying to slow down and savor them, sorry to see the book come to an end. I gobbled The Fractal Prince up in just a few days, hungry to devour as many pages as possible during my daily commute between tube stations. Step into the Palace of Stories, taste their body of fractals…
0 kommentar(er)
