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So because I am a genius, and I always seem to pick up the massive books to read when I am just finishing a quarter and starting to dive into work, or just ending a quarter and surrounded in finals, I spent most of my finals week reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.
Cryptonomicon has a very complex plot that follows multiple storylines across two timelines. In the World War II era, codebreaker Lawrence Waterhouse attempts to keep the Axis powers from discovering the failure of their strongest code Enigma, while Marine Bobby Shaftoe becomes caught up in a number of the complex plans surrunding those codes. Randy Waterhouse, fifty years later, gets entangled with the fallout from those events while helping his friend Avi set up a data haven in the Philippines.
I want to say, first, that the book definitely has a good many flaws. It's kind of bloated; like many Stephenson books, it ends suddenly and ambiguously; there are no female POV characters (which especially disappointed me, because it's not like he can't do them) and of the few female characters there are, even the ones that start out interesting end up basically love interests; and there are a few sections during the war in the Phillipines and New Guinea that are kind of problematic - seriously, cannibals? - although not nearly as many as there could have been, especially for a WWII novel. Other things which bothered me, but might not bother other people: Stephenson does not seem to believe in the existence of female geeks; I have absolutely no mathematical or scientific background, and therefore often got lost when he delved into number theory; and while I generally enjoy the satire, I wish he would stop taking potshots at academics, because they're not even clever potshots, just kind of tired and cliched. Also, neither Randy nor Lawrence Waterhouse were quite as interesting to me as Daniel Waterhouse from the prequel The Baroque Cycle.
All this is going to make it sound like I didn't like the book at all; on the contrary, I actually enjoyed it a lot. Stephenson has an interesting and often very funny writing style, the plot is fascinating, and even when I was technically lost I wanted to keep reading to find out what was going on. I did like many of the characters introduced, especially the more minor ones (Avi, Goto Dengo, and Rudy von Hacklheber are all on my favorites list, and I am very happy that Goto Dengo did get to be a POV character.) And in general I tend to find WWII stories extremely interesting. Moreover, it's consistently the sort of book that provokes thought, which is another reason it took me so long to read; even when I disagreed with what Stephenson was doing, or what one of his characters concluded, I still always had room to think about it, which is something of which I very much approve. So I would overall recommend it, but I feel I can't do that without getting into the fair warning first - and I still think The Baroque Cycle is a better set of books.
Cryptonomicon has a very complex plot that follows multiple storylines across two timelines. In the World War II era, codebreaker Lawrence Waterhouse attempts to keep the Axis powers from discovering the failure of their strongest code Enigma, while Marine Bobby Shaftoe becomes caught up in a number of the complex plans surrunding those codes. Randy Waterhouse, fifty years later, gets entangled with the fallout from those events while helping his friend Avi set up a data haven in the Philippines.
I want to say, first, that the book definitely has a good many flaws. It's kind of bloated; like many Stephenson books, it ends suddenly and ambiguously; there are no female POV characters (which especially disappointed me, because it's not like he can't do them) and of the few female characters there are, even the ones that start out interesting end up basically love interests; and there are a few sections during the war in the Phillipines and New Guinea that are kind of problematic - seriously, cannibals? - although not nearly as many as there could have been, especially for a WWII novel. Other things which bothered me, but might not bother other people: Stephenson does not seem to believe in the existence of female geeks; I have absolutely no mathematical or scientific background, and therefore often got lost when he delved into number theory; and while I generally enjoy the satire, I wish he would stop taking potshots at academics, because they're not even clever potshots, just kind of tired and cliched. Also, neither Randy nor Lawrence Waterhouse were quite as interesting to me as Daniel Waterhouse from the prequel The Baroque Cycle.
All this is going to make it sound like I didn't like the book at all; on the contrary, I actually enjoyed it a lot. Stephenson has an interesting and often very funny writing style, the plot is fascinating, and even when I was technically lost I wanted to keep reading to find out what was going on. I did like many of the characters introduced, especially the more minor ones (Avi, Goto Dengo, and Rudy von Hacklheber are all on my favorites list, and I am very happy that Goto Dengo did get to be a POV character.) And in general I tend to find WWII stories extremely interesting. Moreover, it's consistently the sort of book that provokes thought, which is another reason it took me so long to read; even when I disagreed with what Stephenson was doing, or what one of his characters concluded, I still always had room to think about it, which is something of which I very much approve. So I would overall recommend it, but I feel I can't do that without getting into the fair warning first - and I still think The Baroque Cycle is a better set of books.