This month we’re publishing the mass-market (regular sized) paperback of Charles Stross‘s near-future novel of crime and computer gaming, Halting State.

A whole bunch of reviewers rather enjoyed it when it first came out last year in the US and we think BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow summed it up pretty darn well in his review:

“Charlie Stross’s latest novel Halting State starts out as a hilarious post-cyberpunk police procedural, turns into a gripping post-cyberpunk technothriller, and escalates into a Big Ideas book about the future of economics, virtual worlds, the nation state and policing, while managing to crack a string of geeky in-jokes, play off a heaping helping of gripping action scenes, and telling a pretty good love story.”

But don’t just take Cory’s word for it (or ours)… you can sample the opening section of the story for yourself, courtesy of this extract from Halting State that we’ve posted elsewhere on the site.

And please feel free to leave your own mini-review of the book (or a link to your review elsewhere) in the comments, below, if you’ve already discovered the joy of Halting State for yourself and want to shout it to the world. We’d love to hear your thoughts.