Jean le Flambeur

Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist, and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy - from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of Mars. Now he’s confined inside the Dilemma Prison, where every day he has to get up and kill himself before his other self can kill him.

A physicist receives a mysterious paper. The ideas in it are far, far ahead of current thinking and quite, quite terrifying. In a city of “fast ones,” shadow players, and jinni, two sisters contemplate a revolution. And on the edges of reality a thief, helped by a sardonic ship, is trying to break into a Schrödinger box for his patron. In the box is his freedom. Or not. Jean de Flambeur is back. And he’s running out of time.

Rajaniemi's future is one in which quantum effects can be manipulated by the powerful to unknowable ends; an era in which some are gods and billions of others are enslaved for the processing power of their brains; where in the inner Solar System, the once-human Sobornost endlessly iterate themselves in vast, planet-sized guberniyas, while casually running experiments on the photosphere of the sun. In this world, Jean le Flambeur has broken out of a virtual prison and, later, into the mind of a living god.