Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Cryptonomicon
Book Review: An impressive work of a sometimes incoherent genius
Summary: 4 Stars
Looking at Cryptonomicon, my second thought was - They call this mammoth a thriller? Surely, a thriller, which should be a tight-written book by the definition, couldn't be this BIG?? (The first thought, if you are interested, was 'Wow!', because such a big book written by one person impressed me - that was before I laid my eyes on 'Wheel of Time', but I digress).
Well, to be honest, it is NOT a thriller. Now, I'm not meaning it as a drawback, I just want to set the record straight. Yes, there are men with guns and spies and submarines and codes and a very big secret, buried for 50 years, but they are not the point of this book. The point is people ... and codes.
Cryptonomicon weaves two tales - one happening during WWII, another in modern day. They are dealing with several generations of Waterhouse and Shaftoe families (those families later featured in Baroque Cycle, which takes place in earlier centuries). I don't want to give you any of the plot, part lybecause it takes around a hundred pages to get, where it is going, and partly because they are a fun 100 pages!
Stephenson is at the top of his game in this book. He knows, where his plot is going (there are some loose ends, but nothing like the ending of 'Diamond Age'), and he keeps his ramblings in check and manages to make them interesting and understandable. I mean, any author, who can write about the way the visual signal is produced in the computer monitor, and keep non-technical people reading two pages of this description with interest deserves admiration.
After 'Diamond Age', in which Stephenson so much loved his world, that he forgot the story, this book makes up for all the mistakes. Stephenson was allways good on style, but here it is never put in front of the story itself.
The main achievement is that the book is allways fun to read. Even when dealing with electrons. And as a bonus there is a wonderfull mathemetical formula of horniness. Can you say this about any other book?
Book Review: An intellectually challenging but very fun book.
Summary: 5 Stars
The author does cover a lot of ground here, and it takes some concentration to keep all the plot lines and ideas in focus, but its definitely worth it.
I had no idea that cryptography was such an integral part of world war II, and its history is the real start of the computer age. It is also intriguing how he uses a sort of generational cycle to tie all the characters together. At the same time, the writer likes to have a lot of fun, so there are a lot of genuinely funny sections that keep it lighter.
I will warn you. Some of the comments about this book being difficult to follow and "nerdy" have a vein of truth in my opinion. I do not agree with these views as valid objective criticism, but more as a mis-match between the reader's need for easy entertainment and this book's complexity. If you like a book that is intellectually challenging, then this is your novel. But if you just want to read something that carrys you along, and does not really require much thought, I would consider another (frankly simpler) book.
Book Review: Another good one by Stephenson
Summary: 5 Stars
Cryptonomicon is yet another good novel by Stephenson. Though I feel it was a bit long and dragged a little in places, it is a wonderful book. I look forward to reading the other books yet to come in this storyline.Book Review: Appallingly terrible. No cohesion.
Summary: 2 Stars
I'm shocked by the critical acclaim this book received in the sci-fi category but I suppose even a turd can float. Two stars is really pushing it. Maybe a star for the number of laughs I got per 100 pages. This is the work of a technically inept egomaniac. He does have some technical background (he drops Unix hints and anagrams the name of a supposed deity who dies and then later comes back w/ no explanation??) However, it's not enough "savoir faire" for any of the content to make sense. It might sound dangerous to some but just plain stupid to computer geeks such as myself. It's obvious that this is not his first book by the way that the author is allowed to recklessly abandon the main plot (or any of the 4 sporadic narratives) for 70-100 page tangents. If he hired a first yr EE student to clarify some basic principles, got some ritalin and snipped about 500 pages, this book *might* be tolerable. Like many technical books or movies, I was utterly disappointed.
Why did I continue? First, it was a gift and I would feel ungrateful if I didn't give it a fair chance. Secondly, there are many alternating plots that the reader would naturally be led to believe that the lives of these men parallel each other in a different time and place. If you like mysteries, you can almost imagine how these people are related. This would have made the book entirely more interesting. But then nothing. I finished the book and whipped it across the room. Later, I skimmed the last half of this 900+ PAGE SLEEPER to see if there was an overlooked morsel of evidence that made all these separate lives connected which would have made all of the silent pain and suffering from that book worth something. Nothing. Exactly what I got from the book: nothing.
Book Review: Approach Cryptonomicon armed with time and intelligence
Summary: 5 Stars
Let's rewrite Lord of the Rings cryptonomiconically:
When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announces that he will shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there is much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.
Immediately, there is some tension, because the author's narration is set in present tense. Now, continuous use of present tense is tedious and stressful, except for Silverberg's 150 - 200 pages nano novels. So, what would it feel like if it was 900 pages in small type? Probably like a poor reader's Iron Maiden, crushing his mind as he's crying out to God to help him move through this.
And amazingly, this is what we have in Cryptonomicon. Prayers answered, God who comes in many shapes, has now arrived in the shape of Neal Stephenson, living and working in Seattle, where I am sure he can be seen from Mexico, scratching his divine beard at NEO sitting on his 80 kilometer swivel chair.
After a certain amount of pages (mote in God's eye: a rather large amount of pages), you'll stop worrying about the present tense and focus on the characters.
Now, the characters. Reviewers who get 400 out 400 useful remarks have already described them in length, pointing out the connection with the writer's baroque cycles etc. I only want to humbly add that I found I cared for all 4 of the main characters in this weird Stephenson tarot deck, the Cryptanalyst, the Soldier, the Engineer and the Nerd (well, yes, the Immortal as well). And as I passed more days with them, I found I cared more and more about them, something that happens less and less with more and more pages of lesser writers. I was also satisfied by the Athena/Mars underlying motive and the grayscale amount of the heroes, the good guys/bad guys' line blurred with craft seldom found elsewhere.
Mote in God's eye number 2: Too many similes in the first half of the novel. Apart from never reaching the "shall I compare you to a summer's day?" originality, all those attempts to say "X is like Z" feel more like insecure or inexperienced writers' ways to point out how smart and brilliant they are. The fact is, that we know this. Otherwise, an Amazon reader called Neal Stephenson would be commenting on Adman's latest novel. So, really, we don't need those "I'm happier than a tornado in a trailer park" similes (which happens to be not from Cryptonomicon, but from the 3-d movie "Cars", so you know what I mean). However, at around page 300 Stephenson either realized the simile blunder or lifted to the godlike status described before and removed the mote.
Finally: not a book for everybody. You must approach Cryptonomicon armed with time, intelligence and perhaps a basic (but no more) understanding of computers and mathematics. 5 stars.