Alex Hoffman, the billionaire owner of a algorithmic hedge fund is having a very bad day. Normally, such a person wouldn't be deserving of anyone's sympathy but Alex is an unworldly physics geek turned super-quant and he's not really in it for the money (honest).
As is normal with many of these kinds of books (Crichton I'm looking at you) all of the author's research is lovingly woven into a fairly sparse plot, punctuated by blasts of financial exposition and populated by thinly but sometimes amusingly drawn characters. Thankfully the flashes of wry humour lift it slightly above most airport novel fodder.
I found it a fairly compulsive fun read (and showing a little more restraint than the average Clive Cussler who I normally rely on to provide this kind of guilty pleasure). As a result I happily devoured most of it while the missus was at her evening class.
Whether you will enjoy it - depends a lot on your interest in the subject matter. Personally, the geeky finance and automated trading stuff ticked all of the boxes for me - even if I didn't really warm to any of the characters or their plight. And the central conceit has been done much more interestingly before eg Neuromancer.
Buy it from Amazon.co.uk >
No comments:
Post a Comment