From your review, I see that you have only read one book out of the BC trilogy. In this case, I'm pretty sure you can't dismiss it without reading all of it.

From your review, I see that you have only read one book out of the BC trilogy. In this case, I'm pretty sure you can't dismiss it without reading all of it. After finishing BC, do a careful re-read of Cryptonomicon. You will find a lot of things that seemed inconsequential on the first read, have a huge backstory behind them and they mesh as smoothly as a planetary gearbox. This is Neal Stephenson at his best. You can really tell that he had the whole story in his head, he just chose to tell the modern-day one first. I really hope he picks up this storyline again. I liked Anathem but I really have burning desire to know more about the families in BC. It's not a fast read and you need to pay attention but the reward is there, IMO.