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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
adventurous
informative
lighthearted
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
mysterious
fast-paced
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
slow-paced
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
informative
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
medium-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I've never been disappointed by a Neal Stephenson book. I read Snow crash around the time it came out, but it was after randomly taking home an unwanted donation of Anathem from the library that I became obsessed with his work. He writes fabulously complicated, thematically intricate, insanely ambitious, and ludicrously entertaining books, which manage to cram mind-boggling amounts of 'cleverness' into elaborate thriller plots constructed on a precarious, almost slapstick basis. At least, that's the stuff I enjoy the most, although recently he seems to have decided to write in a slightly less over-the-top manner. Termination shock was more or less a straight climate thriller, although it was still full of stuff I didn't know, and still remember without necessarily remembering where I know it from (and some very memorable characters, like the revenge-motivated pig-hunting drone-smith). Polostan is, like several of Stephenson's best-known books, a historical novel. It's very short, by his standards, but it's the first part of a trilogy, which I suspect of having been written as one long novel.
So, this is a Neal Stephenson book. It's about a young Russian-American woman, born in the early 1920s, and her adventures in the international proletarian revolution. She plays polo, lives in squats, buys consignments of weapons from gangsters, works in a Soviet steel mill, sells shoes at the Chicago World's Fair, has sex with an adolescent Richard Feynman, escapes from jail, hob-nobs with Lavrentiy Beria, and is consistently smarter and braver than all the people around her. I'm not going to drop any spoilers (apart from the ones I already have), but suffice it to say that it is a typically rollicking adventure from its fun-loving author, and that the shenanigans it contains are not the ones that any other writer I can think of would have decided to put into such a book. There's a lot of research behind this, but it's very lightly worn. It is absolutely not in the vein of Cryptonomicon or the Baroque Cycle, as most of its thematic complexity is implicit, but I still thought it a return to form, after the relatively conventional Termination shock. Stephenson handles language in the way that he always does, with a light, playful touch, deploying idiom and abbreviation in a manner that never fails to bring a smile to my lips. I read this book in very short order, and loved every sentence.
So, this is a Neal Stephenson book. It's about a young Russian-American woman, born in the early 1920s, and her adventures in the international proletarian revolution. She plays polo, lives in squats, buys consignments of weapons from gangsters, works in a Soviet steel mill, sells shoes at the Chicago World's Fair, has sex with an adolescent Richard Feynman, escapes from jail, hob-nobs with Lavrentiy Beria, and is consistently smarter and braver than all the people around her. I'm not going to drop any spoilers (apart from the ones I already have), but suffice it to say that it is a typically rollicking adventure from its fun-loving author, and that the shenanigans it contains are not the ones that any other writer I can think of would have decided to put into such a book. There's a lot of research behind this, but it's very lightly worn. It is absolutely not in the vein of Cryptonomicon or the Baroque Cycle, as most of its thematic complexity is implicit, but I still thought it a return to form, after the relatively conventional Termination shock. Stephenson handles language in the way that he always does, with a light, playful touch, deploying idiom and abbreviation in a manner that never fails to bring a smile to my lips. I read this book in very short order, and loved every sentence.