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I'm raging that this book stops abruptly. Will I even remember it in a couple(?) years when the next installment is released, let alone Bomb Light #3? I should have waited. This series was probably conceived as one long novel (Stephenson being one of the preeminent big-book guys of our time) and dividing it into installments is almost certainly a purely fiscal move: big books intimidate some readers (for reasons of both price and length) and you can sell more books if you manipulate readers into buying more of them. Too, while Stephenson isn't old enough for his publisher to be seriously worried about an untimely demise, he is certainly getting a bit long in the tooth which may also play into the calculus of how to publish this story.
Anyway, it's a fun book, one of those in which much of the important news of the era plays into the lives of the characters directly or indirectly (in this case: the Chicago World's Fair, the exploits of Bonnie and Clyde, the march of the Bonus Army, the work of Communists in the US in the 1930s, and George Patton and Lavrentiy Beria before their ascents to the positions for which the world remembers them). I really appreciated the the protagonist of the book, Dawn, was written like a competent and canny person, whose shortcomings are presented as a result of her youth and lack of experience in various arenas, not because she's a woman. Stephenson does not appear to suffer from the embarrassing "men writing women" syndrome.
Anyway, it's a fun book, one of those in which much of the important news of the era plays into the lives of the characters directly or indirectly (in this case: the Chicago World's Fair, the exploits of Bonnie and Clyde, the march of the Bonus Army, the work of Communists in the US in the 1930s, and George Patton and Lavrentiy Beria before their ascents to the positions for which the world remembers them). I really appreciated the the protagonist of the book, Dawn, was written like a competent and canny person, whose shortcomings are presented as a result of her youth and lack of experience in various arenas, not because she's a woman. Stephenson does not appear to suffer from the embarrassing "men writing women" syndrome.