Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Anathem by Neal Stephenson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Neal Stephenson strikes me as one of those writers who sometimes has fantastic (in both senses of the word) ideas but who sometimes has trouble making a really good narrative out of them. One of the things I'm sure many people complain about regarding this book has got to be the overly long explanation of some of the philosophies the characters in the book hold. I'm sure that to the author, it seemed necessary to explain some of these ideas in order for the reader to understand what was happening, but I doubt your average sci-fi reader (especially one willing to tackle a book of this size) really needs that much dialogue dedicated to explaining the mechanics of his plot device.

With that reservation expressed, I must say that I really did enjoy this book. The story really was a good one, and the characters were memorable and I think decently fleshed out. The plot doesn't move along quite as fast as it perhaps should (which is due to the flaw I already criticized) but the story does keep moving. He does have a good plot device and a good story around it. Perhaps not absolutely original, but some of his ideas like the "mathic world" are ones I haven't seen before, and at least interesting enough to bolster the story when it is in its slower parts.

I can't give this four stars because I feel that it did just have too much fluff. The author is prone to explaining too much, and this makes the narrator, Erasmas, seem just stupid sometimes. For example, using a paragraph to explain how a fish-eye lens distorts the image of anything seen right next to it is just too much. There are some other technical explanations that I won't bother detailing here because the author shouldn't have bothered detailing them there. I know not everyone reading this will be quite as familiar with astronomy or spaceflight as I am, but I would think most sci-fi fans who are up to reading this book wouldn't need such things laid out for them in quite such detail.

Final recommendation: read it if you're a big sci-fi or Neal Stephenson fan and you will probably enjoy it enough to make the time spent worthwhile.

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