I wanted to like this book. I really did. I've heard so many people highly recommend Neal Stephenson as an intelligent, engrossing writer. And while I certainly agree that his technical writing ability is exceptional and full of elegant turns of phrase, I found the actual character development and plotting to be tedious and uninteresting. Several reviews and literary critics have called his work "baroque" and "elaborately constructed" which, to me, turned out to mean verbose and a little pretentious. Don't get me wrong, I love complex stories that make you think, but I also want compelling characters and a clear narrative, neither of which seemed to exist in this 1,000-page work. For me, a book can't survive on elegant writing alone. Stephenson is clearly an intelligent, masterful writer; I hope his other books focus more on the characters and the story.

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Created Jun 30, 2018 at 9:54pm • Submit your own review...