Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book was recommended to me during a time in which I was suffering from a lack of reading material. I tend to read sci-fi novels, but thought I would branch out into more reality-based fiction. This novel is a flop for several reasons. 1. This book is much longer than it should be. I don't mean it's a little long-winded, I mean this book meanders out to San Francisco to get from New York City to Boston. To illustrate this point, I will direct you to the 5-page section that painstakingly details one of the character's habits of keeping his milk cold so he can enjoy his Cap'n Crunch cereal. Similarly, you can read the 10-page email one of the characters drafted to the other characters describing how he ventured into the jungle to take a look at some gold bars. If someone sent you an email that was 10 pages long, would you actually read it? These events are not particularly germane to the plot, they are simply long-winded self-indulgences by the author. Around page 400, I realized that there was very little point to these tangents and it just became tiresome to continue reading them. Others may describe Stephenson's "perfect set-up of metaphors," "witty satire," and "poetic writing style," but this is tripe. Stephenson's digressions are neither necessary, nor enjoyable to read. These anecdotes often become so digressive that they read more like stream of consciousness writing exercises than plot-driven asides. Stephenson insults his readers by occupying entire chapters with these digressions and then capping the chapter with a short, 4-line paragraph that moves the plot along incrementally or hints at some connection to the other plot lines. To visualize this, imagine you have a brother and that brother just won the lottery. He has called you on the phone to tell you. Instead of leading the conversation towards the subject of his winning the lottery, he instead decides to talk about his new chicken soup recipe for an hour. As the conversation concludes, and you're getting ready to hang up the phone, your brother says, "Oh yeah, I won the lottery today." THAT is what Stephenson does over and over again in this novel. This is a truly frustrating writing device and it reeks of the author's hubris. I would be willing to wager that at least 400 pages of this book is nothing but Stephenson's mental masturbation turned text. 2. The climactic conclusion is anything but and is one of the most lazy wrap-ups I've ever read. Throughout the first third of this novel I was engrossed with the WWII side of the story, the characters were interesting, the stories seemed to be moving along towards some mysterious intersection, etc. However, around the 1/3 point this novel comes to a standstill. The characters meander around pursuing obscure goals, telling somewhat interesting anecdotes, but not really doing anything to keep the reader interested. I persevered through this chunk of the book, thinking there was going to be some grand tie-in where my hard work would be rewarded. The tie-in is extremely disappointing; it is not thought-provoking in the least, nor did it produce any kind of "Ah, I see where he was going this whole time," moment. Stephenson knits his stories together across timelines, but it comes together so predictably and clumsily that I was quite disappointed I had wasted my time reading that far. Stephenson does not pause for reflection on the happenings of the novel; the conclusion is merely a bland sequence of events that can be taken completely at face value, unrewarding to say the least. 3. After setting up the characters, they all become flat and unappealing when they begin to interact. Stephenson takes so much trouble to introduce his characters, their personalities, and their back-story through the first 300 pages of the book, and then does absolutely nothing interesting with the them as a group for the next 600 pages. In the introductory portions of the novel, Stephenson does a great job of telling individual stories, i.e. character A did X, Y, and Z; however, he falls flat on his face when his characters start to have complex interactions beyond an introductory nature. At no point in reading this novel did I care about any of the characters' group efforts succeeding, they might as well have been trying to build a soap-box derby car for all I cared about their ventures. The characters interact in such a stiff manner, particularly those involved with the modern-day plot line, that I found myself hoping less and less time would be devoted to these group enterprises. I was particularly struck by how mechanical and lame the interactions between male and female characters were throughout this novel. The dialogue b/w characters of the opposite sex was so stilted, and the progression of the "romances" in this book so obtuse and dull, that it made me cringe to read. I'm not asking for Danielle Steele-style romance here, nor do I really care if romances develop at all; but if you're going to bother introducing a romance as a plot device, then at least make it believable. If I were to base my opinion of Stephenson's ability to pen a believable human relationship, romantic or otherwise, on this novel alone, I would have to say that he does not know what he's doing. The obtuse way in which the characters relate to each other causes the relationships in this novel to come across as grossly under-developed. I understand that this novel is all about secrets and, as such, the characters are expected to act guardedly. However, I got the feeling that Stephenson attempted to hide his one-dimensional relationships behind this veneer of secrecy and it just didn't work for me at all. Lastly, I found Stephenson's reflection on the power of money in the modern world, and his blurry vision of what money could be in the future, to be superficial at best. There was so much room for further exploration of this theme, but Stephenson instead decided to spend time with his oh-so-witty satirical asides. This novel is packed to the gills w/ the author's arrogance and self-indulgence. Check yourself Neal, you don't need to put everything that pops into your brain down on the paper.