Infoquake by David Louis Edelman is the first book in his Jump 225 trilogy. It’s not often that you read a book that is basically about coding a computer program, but that is what David Louis Edelman has done. Infoquake is basically about a small coding shop that gets a contract with a huge firm that has exciting new technology and how it affects them. But, for the most part, the book is as exciting as coding a computer program.

Natch (no last name) is a genius bio/logic coder who has started his own fiefdom(company). He is joined in this company with a business analyst Jara and lead coder Horvil. The book starts off with Natch creating a plan to spread panic in the marketplace and take advantage to jump to the number one sales rankings by releasing a new version of their product that day. While Jara and Harvil meekly comply (while internally debating on the ethics), a real panic starts up and propels Natch to the number one spot for 47 minutes. Jara wonders if Natch created the real panic, while the company enjoys the new prosperity the number one spot brings.

The publicity that came with the number one spot catches the attention of the major dynasty in the system (their ancestor created bio/logic programming) who’s been working for the last 16 years on a major new technology. They want to work with Natch to release the technology into the marketplace before the government can censor it. That’s about the last time the book makes sense. Edelman starts throwing curve after curve, many of which don’t make sense and seem to contradict things that previously happened.

The book has a few problems. The biggest one is that after the number one slot scheme, the book skips back to Natch’s mom’s childhood and spends the next 100 pages going over Natch’s history in way too much detail. The whole momentum from the book’s start is lost and then the book tries jumping back to after the scheme. By this time, you’ve almost forgotten how we arrived there. The ending isn’t that great either, as the central race against time mentioned on the blurb (can the get a demo of the new technology working in 3 days) never seems like it won’t happen. There is no drama about it. Then the book abruptly stops and leaves the reader waiting for the sequel.

While the book isn’t horrible and is a fast read, I can’t really recommend it. There are some interesting ideas about the bio/logic marketplace and some mentions of politics randomly thrown around, but the plot never lives up to the setting.