Rule 34

For some reason it took me quite a while to finish this book while I devoured Accelerando. I've read a few of Stross' books and generally like his style. This time however his use of jargon put me off. I can pin it to a single word: "wave". When the book was written Google Wave was "the next thing" except half a year later it wasn't. This made the whole book feel dated to me. The final twist with the identity of ... somehow didn't get me, and I believe there is a previous book with the several of the same characters that I haven't read. All these factors made me enjoy the book a little less.

Despite these personal issues I think this is a good and fun read of a future where reality has become augmented and spam turns smarter every day. It's not too far into the future and I can easily imagine many of his visions coming to pass. I like the setting in Edinburgh as well. The 2nd person perspective is something you get used to after a couple of pages.

It's neither a quick nor an easy read with dense writing, a slow-starting, complicated plot with many twists, turns, and viewpoints. This book suffered from my not having enough time/concentration. This is more of a vacation read.

PS: as the title suggests: you better be an internet nerd, or you won't get half the jargon anyway. In that respect it seems even worse/better (depends on your pov) than Accelerando.

I decided that I would not finish Charles Stross' Rule 34. I bought that one on title only, because it made me laugh (Rule 34 of the Internet states: "if you can imagine it, there is porn of it", +/- local variants).
I was first taken aback by the use of the second person, leaving a feeling of Choose Your Own Adventure book; it gets better after a few pages.
Then, there is the fact that "you" change from chapter to chapter. Again, it needs some adaptation, but oh well.
Last blow was the over use of... I suppose scottish accent transcription, possibly "as it would be in 2023" (no opinion on this, I'm definitely not an expert on accents ;) ). My English level is not ridiculous, but if you make me subvocalize a word or more per paragraph, trying to understand what it means from the approximate pronunciation that I can guess, and maintaining a brain cache of what I've figured out, I'm going to be very annoyed very fast. As in, after 2 chapters fast. Well, after two annoying chapters and the first page of the 3rd one that was definitely getting worse in that regard.