And the award for best throwaway line goes to...

_Halting State_ (Charles Stross), for this lovely gem:

[As power fails in the cops' mobile HQ:]

    There's a faint popping noise, and the entire wall of the incident
    room ****fts to the colour of the night sky above a Japanese City.

Nice one, Charlie.

_Halting State_ is also a strong contender for the award for Most
Justified Use of Second Person (Which Usually Annoys Me.)

ObReview: I'd been putting of _HS_ because the premise (investigate a
crime in virtual world) seemed ripe for trendy badness. I was wrong.
It's a good book, maybe not quite as wild a ride as _Glasshouse_, but it
is set a lot closer to our time. The VR/Gaming stuff seems well-done,
and in particular the use of reality-overlays strikes me a as a lot more
"this is how it would work in the real world" than, say, _Rainbows End_.

I liked Chabon's _The Yiddish Policemen's Union_ a *lot*, but I'd have
a tough time choosing between that and _HS_ for the Hugo. (Haven't yet
read _Brasyl_. no desire to read _Rollback_, liked _TLC_ but it somehow
doesn't strike me as quite at the level of _HS_ or _TYPU_. YMMV. HTH.)


TTFN,
Steve

-- 
Steve Greenland
    The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
    system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
    world.       -- seen on the net