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I have loved Stephenson's work in the past, up until about Cryptonomicon. Everything I've read since has been a great short read, bundled up in a thousand page
by linsomniac 9y ago
I have loved Stephenson's work in the past, up until about Cryptonomicon. Everything I've read since has been a great short read, bundled up in a thousand pages.
Seveneves started off strong, but then turned into a real slog. It could have been a great 200 page book, but at 600 pages I was just glad to be done with it and expect it to be the last thing of his I read. The Baroque Cycle felt similar, even though it contained many of the characters I loved from Cryptonomicon, but I just couldn't make it through it.
I see there are people here who like or love it, which is great. I am not surprised to see others here echoing my feeling that it was quite a slog to get through.
Stopping at Act 2 is probably not a bad idea, though I feel like Act 1 is a lot of setup that pays off in Act 2 so I wonder what the point would be.
- Ar-Curunir 9y agoBut Anathem is his best work!
- finnh 9y agoIt's funny how personal all of these preferences are. I, personally, thought that "Diamond Age" was tepid, and "Zodiac" pretty stupid (but an early work, so forgiveable), but I've pretty well loved everything else that Stephenson wrote by himself. On the shared-author side of things, the DODO book is terrible - dropped after about 2 pages - and the Mongoliad stuff looks tripe too. Anathem and Seveneves are among my favorites. And I really liked the entire Baroque Cycle! (after consciously avoiding it for years).
- aeorgnoieang 9y ago> the Mongoliad stuff looks tripe too It's not like Stephenson's other works but I found it to be perfectly competent historical-ish fiction.
- Florin_Andrei 9y agoIf the thing that most deeply interests you is Knowledge (with capital initial, and understood in the broadest sense possible), then Anathem is like catnip for your brain. It's the book that shows how deeply the author understands what motivates knowledge geeks - be they active in science, technology, or any other field. Reading it, nearly at every page I was like "wow, this guy gets it!"
- pavel_lishin 9y agoI never finished the Baroque cycle, and never will, but enjoyed Anathem tremendously, and thought Reamde was a fun adventure novel.
- baddox 9y agoI’m curious what parts you thought were a slog other than the last act? I presume you disliked other parts as well, because from my memory there was a lot more to the first two acts than 200 pages.
- DandyDev 9y agoNot OP, but the chapter Ymir, near the end of the first act I'd waaaay too long.
- linsomniac 9y agoI recall a lot of really deep dives into details that I don't feel moved the story along. In my mind, the wing suit, her trip back up in the wing suit, the ring world, a lot of these things were described in excruciating detail. Maybe there is more to the book than could be fit into 200 pages, but I also don't feel like there was enough to it to fit into 600 pages.
- macintux 9y agoI ended up skimming. A lot. I just didn't have the patience for pretty much everything post-white-sky until the leap forward in time.