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3.67 AVERAGE
3.67 AVERAGE
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.
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
A return to form in the hist-fic tradition of the Baroque Cycle, but at a thickness that doesn't preclude the book from coming on a camping trip and a pacing that makes it a pretty fast read. A slow warm-up at the start accelerates rapidly through the middle, to a whirlwind finish that has me waiting eagerly for the next installment. I've always enjoyed Stephenson's approach to historical fiction, presenting the past as the alien world that it is; it's very satisfying to settle back into that space and in such a tightened, readable package—and with a female protagonist, by no means an unprecedented perspective in Stephenson's work, but still certainly a welcome point of view.
adventurous
dark
funny
informative
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
dark
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
There's enough Neal Stephenson books out there by now that you probably know already if you like his stuff, but I'll tell you a bit about Polostan anyway. This is the first in a new historical fiction series called Bomb Light, set in the US and USSR of the 1930s. It follows Dawn, a young woman descended from communist and anarchist traditions who ends up in some eventful situations, from the Bonus Army in Washington DC to the 1933 Chicago World's Fair to the industrial city of Magnitogorsk in the USSR. Given the series name, it's no surprise that she becomes mixed up in the bleeding-edge research into nuclear science, and the intrigue around various nations racing for the latest discoveries. Like Stephenson's Baroque cycle, most of it is focused on the life of the main character with the historical happenings in the background; and also like that predecessor, it's got some difficult scenes - creepy sexual situations, torture, captivity. The one surprising thing to me about this particular Stephenson offering is that it clocks in at only around 300 pages, downright slim by his standards. Anyway, I doubt it'll change the mind of anyone who bounced off Stephenson's stuff before, but his fans will almost certainly like this one.
adventurous
funny
informative
mysterious
fast-paced
adventurous
mysterious
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Stephenson returns to historical fiction and the rise of new discoveries in science in Polostan. Set (for now) in the 1920s & 1930s in both the Soviet Union and the U.S., it digs into politics, famine, science, and cultural happenings of the era. The primary lens is through the eyes of a young woman who has lived in both locales and sees through some of the BS on both sides. If you like the tapestries Stephenson weaves, this is a pretty solid start.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Miscarriage, Torture, Classism
Moderate: Confinement, Gun violence, Misogyny, Racism, Death of parent
Minor: Addiction, Cancer, Chronic illness, Homophobia, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, Forced institutionalization, Antisemitism, Medical content, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail