Rainbows End

This is a quasi-DNF, because I've got the last fifth of the novel to go but it's starting to drag, and the protagonist is worthless. It has the feeling of something quickly edited and put to market (perhaps the author needed to fufil a contractual requirement?). Who knows, it's ancient history now.

It's main point of interest is Vinge's take on the proliferation of augmented reality and mesh network technology, and sadly I find his observations pretty plausible - namely that the infrastructure becomes a theatre of war for state actors, which leads to network balkanization and the subordination of all private ownership of technology to the demands of state (the novel has a tinkerer character who has managed to assemble a PC whose CPU isn't 'in thrall' to the Department of Homeland Security). It's sobering to compare the world in the novel to our current-day situation of nation-states hoarding (and protecting) software vulnerabilities for exploitation, zero-click malware vendors like Pegasus, automated-decision defense systems, etc.

Meh. Nothing really new in it. If you read Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire, you'd see the introduction to the world of the new, with improbable child geniuses -- and done much better against a European backdrop. The caper is a well known trope. The analysts behind the protagonists and the JITT are swiped from A Deepness in the Sky. And the wacky University hi-jinks was done by Stephenson way back in The Big U.

Which is a pity, because Robert Gu could have been a great character. Here's a man who was a complete bastard by all accounts, with a gift. Now he's dealing with future shock, and a world that no longer cares... and he can't make it care. And yet he's flat and off, thinking about "how to dominate" a 13 year old girl. No-one, not even the complete bastards, thinks like that.

So yeah. Not one of his better works.