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4.03 AVERAGE
4.03 AVERAGE
I really really really liked this book but I did not so much like the ending. The first three quarters or so, I was entranced. I had a hell of a time putting it down to go do other more productive things. I loved the idea of creating a book to empower little girls. I loved Nell and her escape. I loved the woman who read the story for her and grew to love a little girl she'd never seen. But, alas, somewhere in the last quarter, the magic faded. It got all weird and orgy-heavy and vaguely psychedelic and I lost the thread that had kept me so enraptured.
This is a excellent book- it's both exceedingly entertaining and enlightening. While it isn't primarily a utopian/dystopian novel, it in many ways acts as one. Stephenson creates a world with a new sort of government, that is, one that has many governments not bounded by land but rather by voluntary membership. This is a facinating setting for a facinating plot.
DNF at 20%
I have no idea what was going on in this. Confusing as hell!
I have no idea what was going on in this. Confusing as hell!
The first half of this was so good that I felt sure that it was going to become a long-standing favorite. I loved the world, I loved Nell, I loved the Primer. Unfortunately, the plot of the second half of the book wasn't nearly as captivating for me. It felt very disjointed, and to be honest, I wasn't sure what was going on for quite a while. The ideas were really solid, I think, but the connections just weren't there.
adventurous
inspiring
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I am a huge Stephenson fan... most of the time. He's written some great books: Snow Crash, Seveneves, Anathem, Reamde. And he's written a few really bad ones - before reading this, the supposed sequel to Reamde springs to mind (Fall, or Dodge in Hell). This book stutters a bit at the start until it coalesces around Nell. And then, around 250 pages in, it goes completely off the rails. There is a great story in here about nanotech and shared consciousness. But, this book tries too hard to be clever and deep and subtle, and it ends up just being a muddled, nonsensical mess. Instead of focusing on one or two stories and telling them well, it weaves multiple character arcs together through time and location and just yields confusion. I finished it out of loyalty to Stephenson and because I kept hoping that it would deliver in the end like Anathem did. Alas, it did not.
In a future where nanotechnology has increasingly made life easy--for the wealthy--an aged mogul with a rags-to-riches story enlists the help of a middle-class engineer named John Hackworth to create a Primer for his granddaughter, to help her grow into a person who can make bold decisions for herself rather than stagnate in the comfortable life he's made for her. Hackworth, hoping to raise his own daughter to rise above her station, makes an illegal copy of the Primer. Hackworth is mugged by a gang of youths, one of whom steals the Primer for his younger sister, an impoverished and abused girl named Nell. The adventures the Primer leads Nell on in its interactive story shape Nell's own life into one of danger and adventure.
Every Neal Stephenson book I've read, it takes about 200 pages before I start to like it, but once I'm on board, I love it. This one was an early-bloomer, grabbing me a little more than 100 pages in, but the tradeoff seems to be that it didn't make that turn quite as completely. There's ideas I love here, and stretches of the story are just fantastic. Almost everything dealing with Nell and the Primer is great. Almost everything dealing with Hackworth is a slog. When the climactic conflict emerges, it makes some kind of sense by the internal logic of the text, but it feels poorly signaled, and then spirals into a kind of funk of sexual violence and a bizarre cowboy hero fantasy featuring a side character. It's not enough to derail the good, but it does drop it a few notches, and as a result is probably my least favorite of the Stephenson I've read so far.
UPDATE! Second least-favorite now! This one is nowhere near as bad as Fall or Dodge in Hell.
Every Neal Stephenson book I've read, it takes about 200 pages before I start to like it, but once I'm on board, I love it. This one was an early-bloomer, grabbing me a little more than 100 pages in, but the tradeoff seems to be that it didn't make that turn quite as completely. There's ideas I love here, and stretches of the story are just fantastic. Almost everything dealing with Nell and the Primer is great. Almost everything dealing with Hackworth is a slog. When the climactic conflict emerges, it makes some kind of sense by the internal logic of the text, but it feels poorly signaled, and then spirals into a kind of funk of sexual violence and a bizarre cowboy hero fantasy featuring a side character. It's not enough to derail the good, but it does drop it a few notches, and as a result is probably my least favorite of the Stephenson I've read so far.
UPDATE! Second least-favorite now! This one is nowhere near as bad as Fall or Dodge in Hell.
Incredible world building, but the ending fizzled out (as it is wont to do with Stephenson).