Neptune's Brood (A Freyaverse Novel)

This one combines sci-fi and Stross's detective books in theme. Its a mystery with an economic theme - that actually works (even if it doesn't exactly come across simply). Fine yarn, good read (but not an Accelerando)

This is certainly the worst Charles Stross book I've come across. While I'm a fan of his other work, and have read most excluding some of the short-stories, this one disappointed me greatly. It's not the worst sci-fi out there, Stross's worst is still better than some author's best. It's especially frustrating because you can see there's the idea of good book in there, but what was produced is not good at all.

Problems start with the plot: a protagonist who is totally devoid of agency bumbles from one unavoidable failure to another until an overly-telegraphed deus ex machina turns everything on its head just in time to serve up a punishment to a ludicrous melodrama villain. The protagonist is faced with Hobson's choice repeatedly, and the outcome is always simply surviving until the next random indignity is inflicted on her.

This and 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' are both stories about investigating an old crime, but they couldn't be more different. The core mystery here isn't really necessary at all and ends up contributing very little to the story beyond baroque justifications for events. This could have been a great investigative novel, or it could have been a fun space-opera adventure, or even a poignant character piece. It's none of those things. Instead, it feels more like a collection of plot notes the author made for a book he couldn't be bothered finishing.

The old adage "show don't tell" is gold in writing and the basic problem here is one the author must have been aware of: too much "tell" and not enough "show". Almost everything is explained in a series of long, rambling, monologues direct to the reader from the protagonist. Often these pointless embellishments are prefaced by the character telling you it's a lie anyway. It's as if the author wants you not to care.

In his condescending monologues about made-up economics, Stross repeats the same things until you become sick of them, and while a lot of what he has to say is based on contemporary computer authentication schemes, it's not interesting fictional reading, and not written in a way that is interesting at all. Neal Stephenson gets away with long digressions about history and science because he makes them interesting; he doesn't talk down to the reader and repeat himself endlessly as Stross does in this book.

There are enough good ideas in this book to have produced something worthy, but at every turn Stross turns gold into lead with his plodding "tell don't show" writing. I don't know why - he's not like this in his other books. How this shambles got past an editor has me at a loss. The more I think about it, the more this book feels half done. Perhaps he rewrote it and then they published the wrong document file...

The main character, who we know only from her repetitive monologues never reveals any of her personality, and seems to lack any interesting formative moment. Things perk up towards the end a bit, but by then it's all far too late, and the highly contrived reversals that pivot on the lazy provision of misinformation to the reader don't surprise or entertain, instead they make you care even less.

The protagonist has enough variety of experiences to make an interesting tale, but the author seems determined to render every one of them dull, weakening every experience he can, adding monotony at every opportunity, and pulling the rug from under the reader with every attempted twist. If only there were actual twists... You'd need see where you were going to feel any sense of surprise, but the only thing you can reliably anticipate is that the protagonist will have her world turned upside down again before any plans or schemes she makes can be executed, and this total lack of agency is not only frustrating but also boring in its relentlessness. We have to believe she has a chance to succeed at an action if we are to invest and care, but the reader soon finds that it's all meaningless; the plot will happen as planned regardless of anything she attempts.

Time and again, scenes and information that had the potential to be riveting if 'shown' dramatically are simply narrated in a dull throw-away manner. I wanted to see episodes from this character's history - her formative experiences with her sibs and the antagonist. Instead we are simply told some sibs are good, mother is bad, and we have to take it on faith. We should be allowed to draw our own conclusions, but we're not.

That we're consistently lied to (and we know it) only makes this more tiresome. We don't catch any real sight of the antagonist until near the end, when she turns out to be a sketchily drawn melodramatic cliche. Yet, the protagonist and antagonist are supposed to be, at their core, the same person. It could have been interesting if any meat had been put on the idea, but it was just another throw-away, left undeveloped so the story could achieve its smug conclusion.

Then there's the issue of the 'female' protagonist, who isn't really female because she's post-human and post-gender. Her 'femaleness' adds nothing to the book, and because its not done well, quite possibly weakens it. As the protagonist's character is essentially a blank-nothing, making her (supposedly) female seems like a lazy attempt to tug at our sympathy when she experiences yet another contrived episode of peril. It feels awkward and false. A different author, Brinn for example, would likely have put in the effort to highlight our understandings of contemporary gender and identity issues by looking at them through the lens of this post human personality. Stross doesn't. Instead, most of this book is the equivalent of tying the heroine to the railroad track. It seems odd because the author conveys the injustice of a patriarchal system with skill in Merchant Princes, but totally drops the ball on gender issues here.

I've loved many Stross books in the past. The Laundry series is excellent, the Merchant Princes a gripping read, Accelerando really is a rush, but this... This is just a plodding, amateurish mess, unworthy of an author who can do much better, and has often done so in the past.

I'd love a sequel to this book that actually developed the protagonist - but only if it were written in a less condescending and more conventional manner; showing, not telling, taking the time to let the reader experience the scenes that matter, only glossing over the ones that don't, and not wasting hundreds of pages on repetitive, patronising, self-indulgent, essays that explain at length what we could have enjoyed working out for ourselves from ongoing events.

The only real mystery in this story is what the personality of the central character is supposed to be. I'd like to see that question resolved, because this book does not address it.

Really enjoyed most of this book, but felt like Stross got tired of writing it toward the end and wrapped everything up too quickly, with too many convenient explanations and fantastical "reveals" that came out of nowhere. Bit of a shame.

The scope of this novel is just incredible. I loved how casual huge moves in the history of interplanetary society are explained and how artfully all comes together in the end. Even bitcoins have their place in this far far future- what's not to like?

Really enjoyed most of this book, but felt like Stross got tired of writing it toward the end and wrapped everything up too quickly, with too many convenient explanations and fantastical "reveals" that came out of nowhere. Bit of a shame.

The scope of this novel is just incredible. I loved how casual huge moves in the history of interplanetary society are explained and how artfully all comes together in the end. Even bitcoins have their place in this far far future- what's not to like?

Really enjoyed this book. Easy to read, entertaining plus some interesting concepts around meta-humans and space travel. Refreshing to see the writer respect the physics of space travel somewhat as well!

Charles Stross is well equipped to explore potential futures. In this novel, he does the exploring, but has no apparent interest in his protagonists. I stopped reading at page 72.

What a disappointment after the laundry series.

This book is in the best tradition of Charles Stoss's work. Interstellar finance has never been better thought out or more interesting. Best of all it has space pirates that make sense within the bounds of physics and logic. Great characters as always.

This book had a lot of potential, but ultimately wasn't paced well and the core story was kind of flat. The ideas were unique, lots of great imagery and well thought systems, but no heart. Too much time spent on explaining concepts. Overall 2 or 3 stars for me.

Being a big fan of Stross' fiction i was expecting much of this book. Unfortunately i was very disappointed with it. It lacks a usual witty humor of Laundry series and likewise great ideas and insights of Halting State, Rule 34 and etc. I don't want to rate this book just for being written by C.S. so 2 stars is max.

The book dragged a bit in the beginning, picked up in the middle, and ended just when it was getting fun. I like his other books better. I would have bought the print version had I realized I am not allowed to share it with my husband.

The disclaimer: I am a longtime and ardent fan of Charles Stross books. I've read nearly every one and I look forward to new ones. I am not, however, a fan of Neptune's Brood.
The premise was sound - great potential for some funny bits, a good launching pad for sniping at convention. And all that's in there. But what one has to slog through to get there simply isn't worth it. Mr. Stross, I imagine you have a pretty intelligent audience overall - you don't need to explain, then explain again, then needlessly overexplain yet again throughout the book. We get it. I was determined to finish the book in spite of the feeling that I was wasting my time after just having gotten through a third of it. And I did - to no avail.
Bottom line: I recommend each and every one of his books... except this one.

SF is about suspending belief, but Charles Stross makes this difficult with mathematical errors from the mouths of characters who are supposed to be able to count.
For example:

".001 percent compound interest really racks up over a few centuries"

"cruise at almost 1 percent of light speed: at full tilt it would flash across the gap between Old Earth and its moon in fifteen seconds flat"

BUT: If, like me, you're looking for an original SF plot, and can (somehow) suspend belief on things like 2x2=4, this is a great book. I won't re-hash the plot but just say its unlike anything else I've read, and hence gets 3.5 stars.

With Neptune's Brood, Charles Stross has managed the improbable task of making interstellar finance exciting. He also breathes further life into a universe he first introduced us to in "Saturn's Children", exploring the worlds our children, the robots, have created as they colonized the stars--albeit very slowly, usually at about 1% of the speed of light. It is this odd mixture of global (galactic) finance, Ponzi schemes, interstellar settlement, duplicity by all too human robots, and the very real limits the speed of light imposes on all of these things in the year 7000 AD that is the subject matter of this fascinating book.

The tale begins with the story of Krina Alizond, a robot that could well be afflicted with Asperger's Syndrome and forensic accountant extraordinaire, who plans a small adventure to find her sister, rescue a lost financial transaction, and become fabulously wealthy. Of course, very little goes smoothly for Krina, and she ends up being pursued by several factions who would also dearly love to lay their hands on the stupendous fortune of "slow" money she may (or may not) have found. In the process of trying to escape those who would harm her, she ends up working on a flying interstellar church crewed by skeletons, tangling with nearly immortal hereditary rulers of planets, and venturing far beneath the surface of a planetary ocean that naturally spawns super critical nuclear reactions.

But at its heart, this novel is very much a satire. Robots may be artificially created, but they are very human in their desires and frailties. And the interstellar financial model and economy may not superficially resemble our own, but there is no doubt that Stross has the current global financial system firmly in mind as he gently (and sometimes viciously) mocks and satirizes the establishment. As a result, he produces some genuinely funny moments. He also manages a healthy dose or irony and criticism as he looks at how colonization develops, how rule by the powerful is maintained, and the lack of tolerance the majority has for minority cultures that are very different than their own.

As a result, the novel is quite an extraordinary achievement: it manages to stay well within the bounds of currently accepted physics, but present a fascinating interstellar society; and it extracts a surprising amount of mystery and intrigue from the world of accounting and finance--something many people would probably say is just not possible. (Books about double entry book keeping rarely make for anything other than a fine substitute for sleeping pills!) But Stross does pull it off, mostly. The action is lively, the mystery suitably intriguing, and the characters are both intelligent and funny. It is therefore an unlikely success, but unquestionably a success.

The book falls a little short of 5-star territory, if only because the extended descriptions of the financial system, and the differences between fast, medium, and slow money do get a little tedious at times. The narrative flashbacks also feel a little contrived--they exist a little too obviously just to explain the slightly confusing backdrop of accounting and wealth creation against which the plot and mystery unfolds.

However, when measured against other current works, Stross succeeds admirably. I can't help but draw comparisons to two other works. First, "Blue Remembered Earth" which also tackles the subject of how humanity (or its descendants and creations) reach the stars; and second, "Jack Glass" which deals with the economics of space travel and the high cost of accelerating mass to speeds useful to cross stellar and interstellar distances. In both cases, Stross navigates these waters more adroitly than his peers, and pulls off a novel that is satirically hilarious, satisfying as an adventure, full of interesting characters, and extremely entertaining. No small feat that.

First, a little background.

I enjoyed several of the Laundry books, and to this day adore Glasshouse as one of the best novels I've read in many years.

Saturn's Children however, was a haphazard mess. Something broke down roughly at the halfway mark that caused me to start skimming forward and lose faith in Stross' ability to deliver the rest of the story in a coherent and satisfying fashion. Perhaps it was one too many repetitions of "space travel is s***". Or one too many needless recaps at the start of a new chapter (as if the reader only gets through one chapter a week, like a serialised TV show watcher). Or one too many conveniently bad decisions on the part of the protagonist, who is doomed to forever be a cosmic plaything with no agency of her own. Or most likely, one too many instances of "factual" padding, where the true narrative grinds to a resounding halt, giving way to several scenic tours through whatever pop culture buzz-topic of science, computer studies or pseudo philosophy Stross spent long hours discussing at his local pub.

(I've actually started using "Stross" as a verb, i.e. "to Stross" is to pad or derail a conversation with the sort of "too clever by half" observations/condescension that Stross is filling his books with in steadily increasing measures, at the expense of actual plot and characterisation. A sort of light-hearted Pratchett meets Adams meets Stephen Hawking, catering to the hardest of hardcore denizens of the internet and all their transhuman fantasies (and fetishes)).

I sincerely believe something went wrong during the writing of Saturn's Children. Something was rushed, momentum was lost. A deadline grew too close. Stross decided the overall concept was poor and 'phoned in the second half of the book. Something.

As a result of all this, I was expecting Neptune's Brood to take the form of a belated apology - more or less a re-write or revamp of Saturn's Children, sans tangled structure, where Stross could show everyone the story that SC was originally intended to be.

For the most part, I was very pleased to find that this is exactly what Neptune's Brood is.

Yes, it suffers from the same vast quantity of (now almost cliche) padding as his other more recent books - but this time the padding was actually quite entertaining and paced just right to not completely obliterate the true underlying story. Yes, at some points you do feel the desire to shout (Monty Python style) "JUST GET ON WITH IT!" at the book's pages, when an important event is suddenly and unhelpfully bisected by a treatise on the minutiae of sci-fi financing. And yes, once again the comically dim-witted female protagonist's own wishes and designs prove utterly impotent as she spends the entire story ignorant of essentially all facts pertinent to her situation, leaving her a hopeless ragdoll adrift upon oceans of plot and supporting character actions over which she has absolutely no control.

The story is witty and light, always lacking any of the serious tone that the Laundry books occasionally boil down to, but overall it's an engaging enough read to stand as an improvement over Saturn's Children and be read from cover to cover without stalling or skipping the "intellectualised observational comedy" sections in exasperation.

My only real problems with this latest book are (1) the absence of any real expository bridge to account for how the "Post" humans went from being reverential slaves of old "Fragile" humans to thinking of them in the current more rational terms; and (2) the incredibly abrupt ending that begins by promising an "and then reality ensues" epilogue beyond the happily-ever-after moment down in the deep city, but then fails to deliver any comeuppance for the (in my opinion, anyway) clearly criminal protagonist.

So I've rated this one a three, and hope than one day soon Stross will shock us all by producing some monumental work of deep, serious, emotionally-charged genius that will stand like a Lord of the Rings to all his other The Hobbits. He certainly has the talent and experience for it. Everything just needs to be pulled together at once with the jargonese padding training wheels finally removed.

Like all of Stross’s works, this combines an intricately built world and tight plotting with a biting sense of humor and palpable misanthropy. It’s a strange mix. The first section of the book takes part in a flying church that is SO GOTH my inner teen shrieks in delight (yeah, The Crow was one of my favorite movies in High School). It’s played for humor, and it’s a lot of fun while still being serious and disturbing in parts. Which, BTW, is another strange flavor to watch out for. There are occasional spikes of pure horror that drop out of nowhere and blast you with nightmare fuel, before going back to standard SF fare. The writing is clever, in some places overly so, but that helps to give it Lovecraftian overtones. It is an odd palette that Stross paints with.

The economic framework Stross presents is elaborate and fascinating, but it’s not emotionally compelling. I was interested and enjoyed reading the many digressions into the slow-money financial system and its relation to our current monetary system, but I was never really gripped by anything. The story makes its way to the conclusion in an orderly and respectable manner, and then it’s over.

The most notable thing about the book is that it reintroduces one to what “Noir” originally meant. Nowadays it’s used to mean that generic 40’s style, with wise-cracking guys in fedoras and tommy guns. I referred to Warbound as a “Noir” story. Nowadays it’s all about the furniture. But originally Noir meant a bleak, dark world that leaves the audience feeling soiled. In a Noir story every single person is in it only for themselves. There is no honor, no loyalty, no greater noble virtues to humanity. You can’t trust anyone in even the slightest regard (expect, perhaps, to pursue their own interests). Everyone cares only for their own selfish, short-term, monetary gain. It’s this grim, mercenary view of humanity that leaves you feeling dirty when you watch/read old Noir. Except, of course, usually the protagonist served as a sort of Jaded White Knight – cynical, but an idealist at heart. This book is like that, except the protagonist here is just as mercenary as everyone else.

In fairness, there is a society glimpsed near the end that surpasses human selfishness and is awesome, but they’re barely seen. For all its neat points, the story didn’t really compel me in any major way, expect perhaps to hate all humanity. And that’s not a feeling I’m particularly fond of.

I read Saturn’s Children and had mixed feelings about it so I approached Neptune’s Brood with caution. After listening to the audio book I can say with conviction this is one of the best Science Fiction books I have listened to recently.

Stross has always been very inventive but he outdid himself with Neptune’s Brood. For a start the humans of today are know as the fragile. They have gone extinct and been brought back several times but they are just not made for space travel. Instead the world is populated with metahumans. They consider themselves our direct descendants and they do resemble us in some ways. They have some of our biological functions but change their body types, slow their metabolism, and live much longer. They are created not born but still come into the world as children.

But the metahumans are just part of the story. It is the plot that kept me riveted to the story. What seems very simple at first keep getting more and more complex. To support the story Stross had to create an intricate world and the back-story to support the world and the plot. Krina Alizond tells the story in the first person. When needed she gives a little history lesson that explains the past and sets up the future. It is a nice way to impart facts and works like a charm. Everything in the plot went back to money and the various kinds in a world where it tales years to go from on star system to another.

Neptune's Brood is a mystery and it kept me in the dark until the very end. Look for surprises, great world building, wonderful characters and a future that might be possible. However, it would not be a future with humans as we know them.

Yet another new novel by the very prolific Mr. Stross. And yet again I fell into the temptation of buying and reading it. Some of the reasons that explain Stross’ productivity can be seen in this book, and in some previous ones too: it is very clear that this novel was written very quickly, and it was edited poorly and lazily. There are lots of very annoying and extremely boring repetitions. It is the kind of novel on which the main character repeats over and over and over things like: “My name is Krina Alizond-114” for no particular reason. One time would have been enough. Stross seems so enamored of his conception of the financial system behind interstellar travel and its most important tool (the currency he calls “slow money”), that he repeats detailed explanations about it at least half a dozen times (or more) throughout the novel. Which is a pity, because otherwise the plot is outrageous but interesting and the far-future society he imagines is intelligently conceived and described. Most of the characters are quite cartoonish. However, the main two meta-human characters, Krina and Rudi, are at least fleshed out enough so that readers can care for them.

3.5 Originally posted at Fantasy Literature.

Krina Alizond-114, a metahuman, is worried because Ana, one of her sibs, has gone missing. It’s not that Krina cares much about her sisters — they’re all just the spawn (and, anagrammatically, the pawns) of their scary overbearing mother and, besides, metahumans don’t have all that mushy emotional stuff that so frequently hijacked the thought processes of the “Fragile” race of homo sapiens that created them. The problem is that together Ana and Krina hold the key to a vast fortune and, if Ana disappears, Krina will lose the chance to get her hands on it.

Ana lives on a water world named Shin-Tethys and Krina must get there as fast as she can. First she gets a working berth on a spaceship that serves as a chapel for the remnant of the Church of the Fragile who are trying to find new planets to colonize with real human beings. When the chapel gets boarded by bat-like pirates who turn out to be insurance underwriters, Krina continues the journey with them. But the Church has not lost interest in Krina and there’s also an assassin clone chasing her. That means Krina and Ana’s secret must not be a secret any longer. As she puts all the pieces together Krina realizes that she’s about to uncover the biggest scam in the history of the universe — a Ponzi scheme that she didn’t even realize she was connected to.

Charles Stross’ Neptune’s Brood, which stands alone but takes place in the same universe as Saturn’s Children, and which has been nominated for a Hugo Award this year, is perfectly plotted and full of imagination and inventiveness. Everything about Neptune’s Brood is unusual and refreshing— its characters, settings, plot, themes and structure.

I’ve already mentioned Krina and her family — they’re a post-human species that descended from robots that humans made to serve them. The humans went extinct and the robots lived on. For the most part you can think of Krina as a human because she mostly acts, thinks, and talks like one. But she isn’t quite human — she lacks our emotional range, she’s really hard to kill, and she can just be uploaded to a new body if she dies. This makes her feel distant and inaccessible enough that she’s hard to truly feel for or worry about. I think it was this coldness, more than anything else that kept me from loving Neptune’s Brood.

Several of Stross’ settings in Neptune’s Brood are wonderfully bizarre. My favorite is the flying chapel of the Church of the Fragile which encountered a hilarious disaster and is full of animated skeletons, a zombie priestess, and other oddities. Worshipping the “holy double helix,” the Church is desperately trying to re-create the extinct human species. Much humor comes from these scenes. Another part of the story takes place in a beautiful underwater city populated by communist squids and a mermaid. I loved these imaginative touches. The structure of the novel is also creative with chapters alternating between first, second, and third person points of view. There are several pop culture references that, irritatingly, took me right out of Stross’ awesome settings and back into my own boring world (e.g., “Oh, snap” and “The game’s afoot”).

The main theme of Neptune’s Brood is how the world of finance might look in a universe containing multiple inhabited solar systems that participate in the interstellar economy but where there is no Faster Than Light technology (which is most likely how it’s going to be if we ever succeed in getting out of our own system). How can money mean anything for that kind of economy? Stross discusses the problems with liquidity, exchange rates, cash standards, risk management, debt, bubbles, and fraud. Then he creates a banking system that just might work. This is likely to be of great value to those interested in the banking and finance systems of the future. Even though I’m married to an economist and have spent plenty of time listening to discussions of monetary systems, I can’t say that I find these topics to be as fascinating as others might find them, but fortunately, there is plenty of great scenery and exciting action to counterbalance the money talk in this Financepunk story.

I listened to Emily Gray expertly narrate Recorded Books’ version of Neptune’s Brood.

This is a work of financial science fiction. That much you could get from the jacket copy, and that alone makes it highly unusual. But there's more to it than that.

A MILD SPOILER FOLLOWS:

Without giving away too many of the details: Neptune's Brood is a satire of the end stage of Bitcoin, if you gave it everything it needed to not run into the physical limitations of Earth. Stross refers to "Bitcoins" several times, though there are some details where it becomes clear that if it is supposed to be the same thing, or a fork of the same thing, some of the fatal flaws have been fixed, or converted into the impetus for the growth of post-human culture. But what we're given is essentially a description of a system where only something like Bitcoin could work, and the flaws of that system. The post-humanism just functions to explain how humanity could be physically capable of existing in such a system on timeframes meaningful to the individual. It's cool and all, but this story is about Bitcoin.

Oh, and if you want some more hints as to what way the story is going to go, read the author's opinion on Bitcoin in the present:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/12/why-i-want-bitcoin-to-die-in-a.html

Where are the malevolent aliens? Where are the telepaths? Where are the lieutenants with the exotic guns? Where is FTL? Where is the SF we grew up with?

Charles Stross’ second attempt at a humanless universe shows, interestingly enough, that sometimes, when you take meat out of the cadre, science fiction becomes much more meaty. And to top it all, Neptune’s Brood is a very rare attempt on seriously dealing with interstellar economics! No Mars pioneers’ infrastructure with inexplicable financial funding, no arks that humanity has supposedly financed in order to push human knowledge, just metahumans in a 50 light year bubble, governed by laws of physics and economics.

From the starships to the habitats to the hero android Krina Alizond to the “Slow Money” concept, everything you will read in this Hugo nominated novel feels fresh and original. Neptune’s Brood. A strange rarity of a novel, equally enjoyable by your average (and more often than not clueless about economics) SF reader and your average CFO.

Charles Stross is one of my favorite writers and I always look forward to his work. This novel is no exception. It is a tour de force of far future, post-humanity fiction, set in the same universe as Saturn's Children. I personally have trouble with the tone of these two books - much preferring upbeat optimism to brooding fear - but this is how he rolls. Lots of horror tropes.
Charlie has invented a new side genre of SF, his readers are calling Economic Science Fiction and Neptune's Brood fits right in. I also found a great deal of similarity to Scratch Monkey, a short novel you can read on his website, [...] as far as how transportation at the speed of light could take place in the far future.
My only criticism is the ending - far too abrupt and leaving me hanging. It's as if he ran out of word count and finally threw up his hands and said, "enough." Well, no, it was not enough. Too many hanging threads for me.

Another good book from Stross. This one is set in the same future history as his entertaining Saturn's Children. While written in something of a space opera format, the heart of the plot is actually an enormous financial fraud. Like quite a bit of Stross' work, this book has a satiric edge and allegorical flavor. The plot of Neptune's Brood is driven by banking fraud and investment bubbles and was likely inspired by the Great Recession. The plot is clever and the quality of writing is quite good. I found the conclusion of the book to have a bit of an abrupt Deus Ex Machina quality. As satire, I don't think this book is as successful as Saturn's Children, where the biting attack on the "ownership society" is a particularly effective part of the book.

As a former insurance underwriter, Forex proprietary trader, bank regulator, financial risk solutions manager, and teacher of financial macroeconomics, I loved this book. As one who grew up on Star Trek TOS, 2001, the World of Null-A, In pursuit of the Slan, Foundation Trilogy and other space operas, I positively adored the scenario with all its twists and reversal of fortune.
The hard sci-fi in the tradition of Arthur Clarke, the meticulous reasoning and logic behind all the wonderful new thinking weave into a story full of cliff hanging details and pulse accelerating actions. Amateurs of A la Van Vogt projection of tomorrow's societal structures, as well as adept of Robert Heinlein's exploration of future lifestyles in "I will fear no evil" or even the dynamic battle frescoes of "War against the Rull" from Van Vogt will all alike find source for delight here.
The story as it unfolds, starts with a picturesque and far flung treasure hunt across worlds, but slowly develops into a vast criminal financial (and political) plot of galactic scale. Charles Stross has an insider look at the financial know-how of post sub-prime scams and extrapolates into the stern reality of wealth not being capable of travelling faster than men on rockets: how do you make payroll for settlers you have no way to reaching before a few hundred years ?
Thoughtful, gripping, challenging and funny at the same time, Neptune's Brood is a must read not only for sci-fi fans, but also for macroeconomics students and investment bankers who have a longer term aspiration than next Spring's bonuses.

An extremely intelligent novel and an utterly brilliant read. Stross, for the first time in the history of science-fiction, really thinks about the economics of the interstellar travel and outer system colonization, and builds around it a fun and intelligent story. This is pure science-fiction at its best; with Neptune's Brood, Stross wrote possibly the best book of his incredibly diverse career.

I found this novel refreshing and nostalgic. It has been a long, long while since I have read a work of science fiction well grounded in reality yet unafraid and imbued with enough imagination to explore avant-garde concepts.

Stross delivers exceptionally well with this novel. One will find plenty of brain candy intermixed with just pure candy while reading it.