The Causal Angel

By: Hannu Rajaniemi

Narrated by: Roger Wayne

With his infectious love of storytelling in all its forms, his rich characterization, and his unrivalled grasp of cutting-edge science, Hannu Rajaniemi has swiftly set a new benchmark for science fiction in the twenty-first century. 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. Now his one-time rescuer, the warrior Mieli, is a prisoner herself. To get her back, Jean will need tools: A quantum pyramid scheme, a pair of physical bodies, a nugget of computronium, a bunch of entangled EPR pairs, and a few very special hydrogen bombs. Jean le Flambeur, gentleman adventurer, is back. The solar system will tremble from one end to the other before he's done.

©2014 Hannu Rajaniemi (P)2014 Tantor

God damn, I wish there was more sci-fi like this.

It's hard to find sci-fi that combines relentless imagination with both a serious understanding of science and a genuine sense of fun. Hannu Rajaniemi's post-singularity adventure trilogy does that admirably. This third entry focuses heavily on the Zoku- a culture with a singular interest in modern trends that stretches credibility a bit, but that's nevertheless vividly imagined and endlessly entertaining to hear about. The novel wraps up the the story of Mieli and Jean le Flambeur nicely, though in a way that might unfortunately preclude a fourth book. Hopefully, Rajaniemi will return to this setting in future books anyway.

Having read the other two novels in the series as e-books, I can't comment on how this narrator compares to the previous one, though I can say that his narration seemed perfectly fine on it's own merits. The voices never grated, the pronunciations were more or less as I'd imagined them from the ebooks, and the overall tone seemed to fit the story. If you're considering this audiobook after having read the other novels in print or e-book format, don't let the other negative reviews dissuade you.

Interesting ride

Roger Wayne isn't quite Scott Brick, but still enjoyable. The ending is offsetting, however, dunno how I feel about it.

Wonderful story, but poor narration was so distracting

Scott Brick wove a gorgeous tapestry for the landscape of books one and two, but Roger Wayne’s changes to the pronunciation of EVERY name was so disturbing, I could simply never immerse myself in this story. His poor narration kept pushing me back out of this incredible universe.

abysmal performance

The story was, I think, excellent. But the entire time I was distract by mentally correcting the narrator's pronunciations; he pronounced nearly ever proper noun differently than the narrator of the earlier books. If that wasn't enough, his timing was poor and his performance completely lacked appropriate emotion.

The narrator could do a fine job reading business books, but shouldn't be allowed near novels.

I'm going to have to get a physical copy of Causal Angel. I want to read it and actually enjoy it, and I'll never listen to this recording again. It's a real shame that some respect wasn't paid to the first two novels. Listening to this performance was a heartbreaking, frustrating end to an excellent trilogy.

changed narrator

they changed the narrator for the third book who chose to enunciate the characters names differently than the first two books. for me personally it made it hard to listen to the book.

Epic Conclusion marred by switch in narrators

Hannu Rajaniemi’s brings an epic conclusion to the Jean Le Flambeur series in The Causal Angel. He continues to build out his SciFi fueled world in which gentlemen thieves go hand-in-hand with Oortian warriors saving a universe that is on the brink of annihilation at the hand of the All-Defector. While I focused on the complaint of a dearth of explanation for terms introduced in the review of The Fractal Prince (mainly because Adam Robert’s review was so well-written (even when we didn’t fully draw the same conclusions) that I couldn’t bring myself to write a full review. In my review of The Causal Angel, I’ll focus on Mr. Rajaniemi’s detailed, precise and visceral descriptions that help mitigate a need for explanatory passages. In others, I continue my argument from The Fractal Prince focusing on the context of the terms introduced as a viable way to provide much of their meaning. Most of the reasons by I love The Quantum Thief apply here I’ll do this mostly to celebrate well-honed writing.

Please don’t read this review (or the book) if you haven’t already read The Quantum Thief and The Fractal Prince. While there are no spoilers for those that have, there may be some for those that haven’t. Read them in order, you’ll be lost if you don’t.

One of the hallmarks of good writing is that we don’t simply learn about the world of the story, we inhabit it. We see the rolling grasslands of Rohan as we feel the wind from the White Mountains tousle our hair. We ride the waves in the HMS Surprise as we smell the salt tang in the air. We are swept away in the hustle and bustle of the streets of London as the Artful Dodger weaves around another set of legs to reach in another pocket. The books by Messrs. Tolkien, O’Brian and Dickens all are examples of following Anton Chekhov famous writing advice: “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” We see this as well in The Causal Angel. A brief example of a place description is in an introduction to the Gun Club Zoku headquarters: “We drink dark tea in the mahogany-panelled drawing room of the Gun Club Zoku’s copper-and-brass sky-train. It rides smoothly along the bright golden curve of the Club’s orbital ring around Iapetus, fast enough to create a cosy half a g of artificial gravity. Our view of the Saturnian moon’s surface through the large, circular viewports is spectacular. We are above the Cassini Regio, a reddish-brown birthmark that stains the white of the icy surface.” While this passage doesn’t provide enough for you to know about Zokus, let alone a Gun Club Zuko, it does provide a picture of where they gather: a bit of old-world and steampunk.

I often go between the Audible version and Kindle version of books (using Whispersync for Voice to keep, well, in sync). I did little of that this time. While I own the Audible version, I was disappointed that the publishers switched from the narrator of the first two books in the series, the fabulous Scott Brick, to Roger Wayne. This isn’t a particular hit on Mr. Wayne, but rather a disappointment that the nuanced voice and pronunciations that I came to know and love from one of my favorite narrators was no longer available in the third book. This motivated me to write a plea to publishers to avoid this whenever practicable. Listening to this different voice was too distracting, so I stuck with the Kindle version. Hence, I don’t have much to say about Mr. Wayne’s narration. The 2 stars for performance is due to the publishers changing horses on us two-thirds down the stream.

For full review, see: wp.me/p2XCwQ-19a

Amazing story, narration weak

The narrator is different from the earlier books in this series, and the new one is constantly mispronouncing words. I'd expect a new narrator to make some different choices in narration, but this one makes a lot of objective mistakes on real words. Pretty disappointing!

Thankfully, if you can ignore the narration the story is excellent and a fitting end to the series. Expect a lot of twists that have been set up since the first book.

Change of pace sours an otherwise great series

First need to say I truly enjoyed the first two. They came across as intricately woven post human crime capers that had moments of sheer fun. It moved far faster than the other two books, rendered the heroics and ne'er do well of the "thief" moot and then removes any attachment you may feel for him as a rogue, lovestruck or otherwise, then ends in a trite manner that's meant to be clever but comes across as lazy.

I enjoyed the voice acting or Performance would have been 1 star.. they obviously had not read or listened to the first two books or word pronounciation would have been better.

Great story-jarring pronounciation differences

As others have mentioned, the narrator uses some vastly different pronounciations for main characters and established groups/places. The story is great, but it is a jarring thing to hear names repeatedly stated in such a different way from the two previous books.

much less good without Scott Brick

This is the least of the series, but the first being so excellent, this one is still pretty good. But you might want to read it instead of listening to this audible version. The reader of the first two, Scott Brick, seemed to really understand Rajaniemi's writing style. If anything, his reading of the first two made them better. Absolutely not the case for Roger Wayne. Besides pronouncing everything differently, I find his reading much more difficult to follow and less enjoyable to hear.