Awesome sci-fi geek fodder. Quantum Thief is the story of a thief (bear with the captian obvious moment) in a far flung future where the understanding of quantum physics has catapulted the human race into virtual immortality. But all is not well. There are signs of wear and tear in this galaxy and we are taken to Mars where a small colony of settlers have rebelled against the Sobornost (who appear to be the big cheese of the galaxy), and here the story builds. The mars inhabitants have formed their own little kingdom but of course, as things go in good dystopic stories, all is not as it seems on the surface. 
 Quantum Thief is essentially a detective novel set in a high concept sci fi universe, but it is also a strong dystopic novel that discusses themes such as economics, politics and freedom. The quantum mechanics and all the other random gadgetry comes to gather with this mix bag of concepts to form a brilliant kaleidoscope of images, colors and ideas that race through your mind as you careen along an entertaining storyline with some well placed twists. 
 To give you a glimpse of a particularly techy fight sequence: 
 With a thought, she brings her own systems online. Her right hand contains a q-dot gun, a linear accelerator firing semi-autonomous coherent payloads. Her left has a ghostgun with an array of nanomissiles: each has a war gogol ready to invade enemy systems, to flood them with copies of itself. The programmable matter layer under her epidermis becomes armour, her fingernails harder than diamond. The fusion reactor in her right thighbone spins up. The metacortex Nash engine chooses a set of optimal targets and a cover position for the thief. 
 Its a universe of minds and atoms, mind slaves and mind slave pirates. and in the middle of all this, a heist of epic proportions. But you don't get to actually experience the heist. No, i think this is going to be a 3 novel series. which i'm not exactly going to complain about. Another really cool, but also rather morbid, concept is mind based engineering. Here's a passage where an enthusiastic controller is building a beast of prey. 
 This Hunter will not be one, but many: able to split itself into many parts and become one again. He gives it a single-mindedness he found in an Oortian sculptor, and the coordination ability of a concert pianist, seasoned with more primitive animal forms from the older libraries: shark and feline. He gives it enough cognitive rights to be intelligent, but not enough to have latency, and allocates a fragment of the guberniya smartmatter to it, so it is ready to be launched when its new mistress commands . 
 An absurdity: For a day an age with so much nano engineering capability, where people are basically immortal because the human body has been completely hacked and modified beyond imagination, they still need blankets when sleeping. Reminds me of this Asimov short story i read that was written in the 70s, it spoke about people using paper and calculator like devices in a horribly advanced 30th century :) i guess Asimov didn't see the ipad coming. Even great sci-fi has its cute glithces, but maybe the author really missed the bus on the blankie here. Unless of course, and i doubt this, the blanket has some essential and as yet unrevealed part to play in the plot. 
 Apologies for the rather disorganized review. The book itself appears rather disorganized if you don't give it a chance. Its a book you need to immerse yourself in, over-analyze at your peril. I did feel the plot lines could have been tighter and various turns in the tale better defined. But overall, novel and fun read. Highly recommended to sci fi fans.