From the always awesome Bookworm Blues:

The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi

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 steal their thoughts, to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of the Moving Cities of Mars. Except that Jean made one mistake. Now he is condemned to play endless variations of a game-theoretic riddle in the vast virtual jail of the Axelrod Archons – the Dilemma Prison – against countless copies of himself. Jean’s routine of death, defection and cooperation is upset by the arrival of Mieli and her spidership, Perhonen. She offers him a chance to win back his freedom and the powers of his old self – in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed . . .The Quantum Thief is a dazzling hard SF novel set in the solar system of the far future – a heist novel peopled by bizarre post-humans but powered by very human motives of betrayal, revenge and jealousy. It is a stunning debut.

Ahh, the lovely Kekai Kotaki strikes again. There’s a reason he’s one of my absolute favourite artists working right now. Certainly this cover, coming from Tor Books, is a huge step up from the bland UK cover. I know it sounds shallow, but I’m suddenly a lot more interested in reading Rajaniemi’s novel thanks to this cover; despite the rave reviews, I was never really interested in it. What can I say? I’m easy to please (with good cover art).

Discussion
  • T.N. Tobias October 27, 2010 at 8:51 am

    Love it. Love Stross’s pull quote too. I’ll be picking this one up.

  • […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Tor Books and fantasycafe, Laura Fitzgerald. Laura Fitzgerald said: RT @adribbleofink: The US cover art for Hannu Rajaniemi's THE QUANTUM THIEF is sublime. I want to read it! http://bit.ly/bfcefx […]

  • James October 28, 2010 at 4:09 am

    It’s worth pointing out that the ‘dull’ UK cover art hasn’t stopped the UK version of the novel from selling extremely well. I actually like the UK cover art, I actually find it quite distinctive. The US cover, less so. It’s nice but…I just don’t find it terribly interesting for some reason.

  • aidan October 28, 2010 at 6:28 am

    @James – Anecdotal evidence that cover art doesn’t mean as much for a novel’s success as a strong marketing campaign, raving early reviews and coverage in major media outlets?

  • The Fantasizer October 28, 2010 at 9:00 am

    WOW! This is what i call a kick ass cover, I usually like my covers to not portray the characters, or atleast with some ambiguity if its absolutely necessary to have a cover with a character on it, but this cover is a bad ass example of a character based cover done right!

  • Sarah (Bookworm Blues) October 28, 2010 at 9:03 pm

    Aww… I didn’t notice you called me awesome. That’s flattering, coming from you!