Book review: Halting State by Charles Stross

From Reader #82: I had started HALTING STATE by Charles Stross earlier this year and gave it up as too difficult (the introduction of too many characters in rapid succession, too much jargon, etc.). But I read a review that said that after a somewhat confusing beginning, the book settled into a more understandable form. So I tried again, and read about a third before I concluded than it wasn't true for me. Stross has written a book with three point-of-view characters, and written it in the second person. Yes,that's right--in every chapter, the point-of-view character is "you", but you are a different person each time. One result is that you lose many of the reminders of who the point-of-view character is that you would have in a normal third-person narrative. (Even a first-person version might be easier.) And on top of that, the characters write in a combination of Scottish dialect, police jargon, and computer jargon. It is even worse than BRASYL (another Hugo nominee) in terms of the dialects, because there is no glossary at the back. (I checked this time.) It may be good for Scottish computer types, but not for me. Grade: C