A review by nicovreeland
Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson

2.0

If I was to sum up modern Neal Stephenson in three words they would be: deep dive everything. While that can sometimes be interesting, there’s just too much of it, and the often mundane details overwhelm and capsize the story. For instance: in the first scene, a depiction of a plane crash is probably 80% excruciating details about how a plane is normally landed and how this plane is landed, and what goes wrong. There’s some world building in there, but so so so much of it smacks of Stephenson doing a lot of research and wanting to put every single bit of it in the novel. So much of it is not necessary for the story. Then get ready for a deep dive on the history and biology of wild pigs. If you like the parts of moby dick with the whale genealogies, you’ll love this. I just find myself wishing for old neal Stephenson and skimming like crazy

He also seems compelled to put ALL of his thoughts into the book he’s working on, so this one, which is ostensibly about climate change, becomes more concerned with the effects and ramifications of covid and post-covid pandemics.

All of these distractions absolutely kill the pace of the story. There’s no drama except the drama of CLIMATE CHANGE and all the main characters agree about that so…. I DNFed at 50%