Completed: 6/30/2022
Recommendation: Not recommended
Recommended By: Saw a notice from Stephenson about this book on his Twitter account
Words for which I sought help:
abaft -- in or behind the stern of a ship
Review:
SPOILERS, so be 'ware.
I really wanted to enjoy this book. Stephenson took a scientific truth (great start), implemented it (still happy), and started to look at the potential impacts (hey, this is great stuff). The Stephenson threw in royalty (seems unnecessary) getting busy with a pig hunter (really, come on now) in an effort to up the drama and make the book more of a thriller then a science fiction novel (bad, bad move). I like Stephenson's Science Fiction and Fantasy. I tolerate that he is not great at understanding people's motivations. It feels, however, that he stretched much too far in this novel and worked too hard to do the traditional girl meets boy, girl gets boy, girl loses boy, then boy saves girl (WHAT?!?).
In my opinion Stephenson took some well developed characters and then made them all take left turns so that things would wrap up with a bow. It was unpleasant. He spent a fair amount of time developing minor characters who did not matter. It seemed like every time he needed a coincidence, he made things maddeningly complex in an effort to bring the coincidence about. Either, this should have been a much bigger book or a much shorter book, but I'm no editor and I cannot figure out which it should have been. I cannot recommend it as it is.
No comments:
Post a Comment