[A] rambunctious, thoroughly entertaining heist novel ... Daddy issues go hand in glove with the surveillance state, and they give welcome ballast to Cloudthief’s buddy comedy.
A smart and entertaining heist story unfolds, which Mr. Rich pads out with a less convincing subplot about Tim’s doomed affair with Virginia. Whether in love or theft, information is the valuable currency in this novel. And it is something, we are reminded, that can be smuggled away in a backpack.
A boisterous new novel that's equal parts heist thriller and cry in the digital wilderness ... Filled with sharp descriptions and terrific dialogue, Cloudthief stuck with me. I've read no other novel that captures so neatly what it means to be a data-center nation ... Helps us see the actual, earthbound workings of the magical-sounding cloud, and he gets us thinking about the perils of our needing it so badly.
A road trip that culminates in a heist caper. Rich inhabits both of these familiar forms with brisk effectiveness — he’s especially good with snappy dialogue — and sprinkles them with a hefty dusting of contemporary topicality ... The book’s strongest component, by far, is the relationship between Tim and Virginia, which crackles with true-to-life ambiguity ... By evoking the special human quality of their sex without showing the act, Rich nimbly reconstructs the wall of intimate privacy that cloud-enabled surveillance constantly threatens to erode ... But the novel rarely achieves this level of synergy between theme, plot and writerly technique.
Cloudthief is a novel scheming in the modern age when our wealthiest companies lay up their treasures in heaven, where thieves do not break through nor steal ... Brilliant and harrowing ... Cloudthief is a rare and curious novel that seems to resist its own commercial potential in favor of exploring the challenges of intimacy and trust in the Silicon Age.
With the narrator’s increasing recklessness and deep musings on loneliness and family, multiplying mysteries surrounding Virginia, arresting descriptions of the sanctums of tech, caustic humor, and droll suspense, Rich has ingeniously crafted a seductive bull’s-eye thriller of psychological exactitude and scathing societal critique.
Moving from self-storage facilities to data centers to prisons, he investigates the archiving of objects, information, and people no longer needed. Crisp dialog between Tim and Ces lightens the mood of a serious novel.
Here’s a book for people looking for a new take on the political thriller ... Nathaniel Rich’s new heist thriller Cloudthief points its literary finger directly at the massive data centres working toward accumulating, analysing and redistributing all human knowledge ... This highly entertaining book is one you won’t soon forget.
A sharp, smart meditation on humanity’s bent toward eco-suicide wrapped inside a clever, propulsive heist novel ... Genuine intellectual heft and fast-paced, nimbly plotted action can coexist, after all. Top-notch.
Poignant if scattershot ... Rich exhibits a dry comedic touch and a sharp instinct for the zany, but he ushers the proceedings to a limp finale. Still, this is a witty reflection on living in a world of vanishing privacy.
