The Quantum Magician by Derek Künsken
I hadn’t found a space opera I liked in a long time, so I was very happy to find Künsken’s big, frenetic, furious book. The beginning is a bit cluttered and unfocused. I got the impression that this was one of those projects that the author began back in high school, with an immense, complicated future history (Quebec colonizes Venus??) and the detailed back-stories for each of the characters. I felt like I was reading the second book in a series, but since I often skip the first book of serieses, I liked it.
The Quantum Magician is a heist novel, following a renegade GM quantum theoretician as he puts together a team to aid a rebel uprising. That plot gets a bit lost in its own ornamentation, but it’s saved by the recurring theme of revolt against the forces that made us. How do genetically engineered humans deal with their artificial instincts to fulfill their creators’ wishes? How do nations deal with their own histories? People and their mistakes? The only thing I felt the book was missing was children.
Also, I had a dream about this book, though probably not the nightmare that Künsken would have wanted.