The book review of Daemon on Boing Boing reminded me that I’ve been meaning to put in my 2-cents in. A friend recommended Daemon to me last month – it’s a techno-thriller that has an interesting meta-story of being self-published and gaining popularity originally from word of mouth of bloggers and the like. It’s definitely a page turner, and I quite liked the premise and how it started, but towards the end, it unravels into extreme silliness (and stupidity), which was sort of annoying. (some spoilers) I wasn’t as bothered by the central, and ever-expanding, conceit of having an ultra-coordinated organization powered by a bunch of shell scripts (although it really strains credibility as the story goes on), but rather by how stupid and incompetently TPTB were depicted at a pure tactical level. The last incident at the bunker could have never happened for at least a half-dozen simple reasons. Instead of being exciting or thrilling or whatever it was meant to be, it just offended my sensibilities. Anyway…
The second novel that I finished recently was Neal Stephenson’s latest, Anathem. I’m not sure when I really committed to reading it – I spent a long while near the beginning going through a page or two at a time (basically thinking about that xkcd comment) which wasn’t helped by the format – reading it on the Kindle meant that it was pretty impossible to flip to the glossary or appendices (of course, in theory, ebooks should actually be better with annotations and definitions for things like this, but no one’s taken the time to do that properly yet). On the bright side, the Kindle is probably at least a pound or two lighter than the 960pg hardcover, so I guess that wasn’t the worst trade off.
Once it got up and running, however, the story actually starts to zip along. Not only are you rewarded for the initial slog, but that experience is actually tied in, both thematically and within the plot itself – which I found to be pretty clever. And, there’s an honest to god real ending to boot. So, kudos to Stephenson for that. I’m sure that I’ll be re-reading this at some point, and that it’ll be worth it.