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Title: Jargon porn.
Review: I was looking forward to reading this one, but in the end I barely made it through. Stross shovels on an unbelievable amount of jargon from page one, and that's all there really ever is. I never got the sense that Stross was ever interested in making this more than an bolted together mess of the current hot topics in Sci Fi.The characters are two dimensional, poorly formed and motivated, and undergo almost no development. You never get the sense that they're anything more than jargon mouthpieces - with the one exception, they largely march through the plot, never really taking in, reacting to, or feeling anything. The bold print passages that link what I'm assuming were formerly independent short stories seem rushed. And don't even get me started on the endless run-on sentences...In the end, I'd hoped for a lot more given the hype surrounding this book.
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