Thursday, August 06, 2009

Anathem

Anathem
Neal Stephenson


This book can not be explained in a short review. Stephenson creates a
world that is very complicated, has its own history, and creates a
language to go along with it. While some elements of the novel will be
very similar to what the reader is used to, some of the book can be very
confusing.

The story follows Erasamas, a young avout, as he is pulled out of his
math (a scientific monastery of sorts) with several of his companions to
solve a problem of the secular world. The beginning of the book is set
up to explain to you what a math is like before you get to the actual
plot. The pacing can be slow at times but lightening quick at others.
This is a very aggressive work by Stephenson and may be called his
masterpiece. Not that it is perfect, but Stephenson set out to write a
literary science fiction novel and he succeeded.

Readers of Stephenson know that he has a tendency to not end a book so
much as he stops writing it. In this book Stephenson did a good job of
wrapping things up on some degree and leaving a lot up to the
imaginations of his readers. A goal that he has been tweaking from day
one.

This book is hard to suggest to just anyone. People with very
scientific minds that love talking about and exploring theories and
science should really get into this book. The literary elite have
seemed to enjoy this book as well. This book is very deep and thought
provoking though. This isn't popular sci-fi. Personally, I loved it.

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4 comments:

Steve Betz said...

I loved this book too. Every 150 pages or so, I thought he did a great job of throwing a curveball and blowing away all your internal fantasty-sci-fi-reader expectations. I literally had no idea what to expect. Loved it.

grrrace said...

I didn't read this one, but Steve did. He enjoyed it. These days I've just been reading short Doctor Who and Torchwood novels. hehe.

Budd said...

grace- when you have some time give it a try. by some time I mean quite a bit. Steve- I had no idea were the novel was going and he about lost me on the narrative flipping part.

kat >>/dev/null said...

i will totally be reading this.. thanks for the review (omg. thanks)