(This review is from 2004.)One Sentence Synopsis: A female soldier assigned as the new security captain for a problematic world has to investigate the death of a famous scientist and recover her lost notes before they fall into the wrong hands.Genre: Post-cyberpunk murder-mystery with an edge of hard science and a lot of political intrigue.Continuity: Completely standalone, though there is sequel potential.Content: This one isn’t for the kiddies. It has references to sexuality—though it never ge...

Just wonderful. All of the best elements of classic sci-fi and who-done-its, yet totally new at the same time. I was fascinated on every single page. The way she wove the science and human angles together was perfect. In an odd way, it reminded me of the first Dune book. Not the story in any way other than perhaps the genetics/breeding humans stuff, but because both universes were so fully imagined that they feel absolutely real, from technology to politics to interpersonal relationships, it all...

I don't know how exactly to categorize this story, it is a military sci-fi espionage mystery set in a post-cyberpunk world. The overall feel reminds me of The Quantum Thief but on a smaller and more manageable scale. It come with a bit of a learning curve but it intriguing enough to help you push through until it starts to click.

Recommended to me by OddKaren, and upholds the general trend from her of high quality recs. OddKaren is always on the search for "Ladies and spaceships" books, (and who isn't?) and this one exceeds the genre.Moriarty (I hope this is a pseud, as it would be an awesome one) writes a thickly textured future in which the definition of life is expanding in all directions: AIs, comprised of unstable networks of smaller awarenesses, are fighting for their civil rights, genetic constructs are second-cla...

Oh my yes. Oh MY yes. Some years ago, I made a conscious effort to switch my home genre from hard SF to fantasy. Fantasy had more women writing in it, and it seemed to be growing and developing as a genre, while SF stagnated. There seemed to be far fewer fantasy books where women existed only as prizes, as nonsentients, as set dressing, as motivation for the Man to do Manly Things for Manly Reasons. There were fewer (though still many, sadly) fantasy books where queer people and brown people jus...

Genre: Science Fiction (post-human, far dark future) / RomanceBrainycat's 5 B's:boobs: 1 // blood: 3 // bombs: 3 // bondage: 1 // blasphemy: 2Currently listening to: ESA "The Sea and the Silence"Sometimes books have a singular aspect that attract their readership despite all the other failings; one thing the author got so right that all the problems with the book seem trite and easily overlooked. What Spin State got right for me was the protagonist. Catherine Li is made of pure win. She's no Tak...

In a future where quantum entanglement has enabled FTL transportation and communication, Major Catherine Li is a UN peacekeeper with a shoddy, piecemeal memory, a lot of hardware in her brain, and a secret she's been keeping for her entire professional life. She gets assigned to investigate the death of a prominent gene-engineered scientistSo, right around the time that the pretty lady in white showed up in Li's office, a classic damsel in distress move if I ever saw one, I realized that this wa...

Perhaps I should be upfront, this is not a 4 star book yet I could not bring myself to give it a mere 3 stars for I feel I owe it. Thanks to this book I have had an enjoyable introduction to the world of Hard Science Fiction and I know that could have easily not been the case.Spin State is, in a way, two books:1. An inventive extrapolation forwards of human science and human nature to conjure a world which is at once familiar in its motivations but monumentally different in its experiences2. A m...

There is nothing wrong with world building, as long as that world is being built in service of the story. (See Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow, Asimov's The Gods Themselves, or nearly any James Tiptree story.) In Spin State, there are piles and piles of endlessly dense and often incomprehensible details about a dystopian world, all in order to tell a straightforward and less than genre-bending murder mystery. Painted in tiny yet muddied strokes (the pointillism of science fiction?) the "mystery...

Oh my god. Oh my GOD.Hard SF - three pages of "recommended reading"-type hard SF - with genetically modified humans and AIs and weird-ass xenobiology AND A MOTHERFUCKING BISEXUAL PROTAGONIST.This is everything I have ever wanted, EVER. So good, so good, SO GOOD. I think I need to reread to get the science all straight in my head? but, oh my god, seriously, hands down the best hard SF I have read in a long fucking time.AND IT HAS TWO SEQUELS. FUCK YEAH!!!!!

'spin state' leaps out of the gate as a military mission gone wrong, then shifts into a far more densely complex and thinky mystery, where the whodunnit is far secondary to the world it's wrapped up in. oh, Moriarty (and if that's her real name, +100 awesome points), wow can you craft a future. it's a post-human world full of illegal genetic surgeons, emergent AIs, and travel and communications fueled by quantum mechanics and bose-einstein condensates (yes, this one had me taking a few trips to

Stayed up until the wee hours finishing this one. I must admit that a lot of the explanations of the technology went way above my head, but the story was top-notch. I guess that is reasonable since this book of fiction has several pages of bibliography at the end of it, all relating to quantum physics, if that gives you any idea. BUT, you don't need to be interested in quantum to really enjoy this book...there is something for everybody. Mystery, crime, romance, social commentary, etc. and so fo...

I am so pleased to have discovered this talented writer. In this debut novel from 2003, we get a compelling sci fi detective tale and thriller bound up with a fascinating human-AI (Artificial Intelligence) love story and themes of class struggle projected to a future where the defining characteristics of humanity have become ambiguous.The beginning of the story drops you right into the middle of action, with the female protagonist Li leading United Nations Peacekeeper soldiers on a raid on an il...

It gives me great pleasure to finally be able to write a review on this amazing book. This is one of the best Hard SF books I've read in some time. It combines theories of quantum mechanics and multi-universe theory as well as confronting issues of class, humanity, identity and the nature of love all in a wonderfully creative and gripping way. Genetic constructs and sentient vs. nonsentient AIs, war, intrigue, betrayal, romance--this book has it all. And the main character Catherine Li, as well

Spin State sets a blistering pace and trusts the reader to catch on quickly. I had to read at a slower pace than usual or risk missing something important. There's a large cast of characters made larger by the concept of shunts that allow another to inhabit a person's body temporarily. There's murder and quantum physics and politics and artificial intelligence and human enhancement and emotional entanglement and a fine, flawed protagonist in soldier-with-a-secret Catherine Li. I'm not sure I und...

I read 'Spin State' at the wrong time. It was first published in 2003 and I would have wholeheartedly enjoyed it back then. I still love sci-fi, but in 2020 found this novel extremely predictable as I've read similar plots so many times before. That may sound damning, but don't get me wrong about the novel's quality. It works very well as a hard sci-fi thriller and there are some interesting features. I waited in vain for the plot to surprise me, though. The protagonist is a bisexual woman, whic...

So. Spin State is a pulp sci-fi novel set largely in a mining town on a distant planet. It’s very much a thriller, with a lot of action and characters that are unsure how much they can trust one another. The author creates a whole universe, and does so quite convincingly, but this does affect the pacing somewhat as the book is quite long and there isn’t that much plot to sustain it. Equally it means that some aspects of the universe are described that just aren’t relevant to the plot or characte...

There is nothing I like better than a good old fashioned "what-if" this book asks some of those questions about quantum physics and entanglement, and asks them in the form of space opera.

A strong 4.0 StarsThe writing is great and the world is deep and well-thought but it never quite came together for me.I kinda love when mystery have the big reveal and tie up all the seemingly unrelated subplots and characters into a nice clean narrative bow. I was eagerly anticipated that moment in Spin State from about the half way point but it unfortunately never really comes together at the end and I think with a story as somewhat complicated and complex as this one having that big moment wh...

I give Moriarty credit for trying to be hard SF, but found the business about one human shunting into the body of another unconvincing. Yes, the advanced AI's might do it--assuming the human host was specially wired, conditioned, etc., etc.--but not humans.For all the supposed hard science, the book explores many social and political issues, in the grand tradition of SF.