They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. Well, exposition is so scarce in Hannu Rajaniemi's Jean le Flambeur series that I found myself getting excited and highlighting passages whenever a modicum of the stuff ever did finally come around. Though while there's something challenging about being dropped into a strange world with no explanation, it can also be incredibly satisfying to stretch one’s mental muscles in the way that only such a sink-or-swim lack of background can provide.

The Fractal Prince’s predecessor, The Quantum Thief, started in two places: strange and foreign experiences in space, and less strange and foreign (though still quite fantastic and engrossing) experiences on a moving city on Mars called the Oubliette. Now, in The Fractal Prince, the outlandish story line in space is a comfortable place compared to the seemingly post-singularity world of an Arabian desert where mind-copies are sold as slaves and nanomachines permeate the air, destroying unprotected technology and people alike. Rajaniemi definitely plunged full speed ahead when he pushed the limits from his last book to this, and the story wastes no time filling in the newly acquired space.

In this second installment of the series, we see characters getting deeper, plots getting thicker, worlds getting bigger (and darker), and the tension rising ever higher. I can’t wait for the third book, and won’t be the least bit disappointed if Rajaniemi decides to keep the series going instead of wrapping it up as a trilogy.