Titanium Noir

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Nick Harkaway: Titanium Noir (2023, Little, Brown Book Group Limited)

English language

Published May 18, 2023 by Little, Brown Book Group Limited.

ISBN:
978-1-4721-5693-8
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4 stars (4 reviews)

4 editions

Injecting a little weird into gene-punk, old school noir.

4 stars

Fun noir detective story. Interesting setting and nice characters. Had some of the tropes about noir stuff that I find grate after a while – everyone is cynical and wise, the reader implicitly naive and ignorant, as though it's our fault. Also set in a nearish future but left out mobile and surveillance tech just because it was convenient to do so/didn't fit the tropes. Felt like a wee bit of a cop out, would have liked to see some acknowledgement of it in some way. But a very enjoyable read.

Harkaway is usually pacy, but this one felt particularly brisk and to the point (certainly shorter than his usual).

An SF noir to get your teeth into

No rating

I really liked this noir mystery that wasn’t just gritty for the look of it. The influence of T7 and Titans on society was great food for thought, and I spent a bit of time wondering what being “human” would mean in such a world.

The entire story’s told in first person, present tense by Sounder. He’s an interesting character to follow around and competent without being smug or suspiciously lucky. I did initially wonder if he was hiding something special about himself to be doing the kind of job he was, but there were no gotcha moments of that sort.

I enjoyed the other characters a lot. They all felt like they were living their own lives with their own murky motivations rather than their actions revolving around Sounder and his case.

Plenty to get your teeth into in this SF noir

An enjoyable, dark thriller in a weird world

4 stars

None of Harkaway's books are quite like one another, and they're all worth your time.

Like the pulp that inspires it, Titanium Noir is a short piece that rolls along a brisk pace. The protagonist, Cal Sounder, is a bridge between two worlds. He lives and works as a detective, doing private work and consulting for the police of Chersenesos, but has ties to the level of society occupied by those so obscenely wealthy their very being is a mixture of unsettling and glamorous both for the other characters and for us readers. When crimes involve one of these hyper-rich, Sounder is brought in to smooth things over. The book starts with Sounder arriving on scene for a crime much too complex and messy for the easier fixes he's used to.

Sounder navigates a crime, a world, and a story in which power is manifested very directly as something brutal …