I don't know where to begin. This is a fascinating, weird, amazing book that throws together a billion different ideas from Plato's ideal forms to Schrodinger's Cat and Occam's Razor and the way light particles can be everywhere at once until they are observed. It takes place on a distant planet where society has split into seculars and those who live in cloisters and study math and science. It's full of made up words but they're all so close to understandable that it's not hard to follow, although if you haven't studied physics or philosophy I imagine it's confusing. Stephenson builds worlds like no one's business, and the first half the book is mostly just that. It was so interesting and well-done that I would happily have read history books just about the Third Sack and the Harbingers and the Terrible Events. The second half of the book is about what happens when thing start to happen in the secular world. There's some action adventure and some hard scifi at the end. Now and then Stephenson gets so caught up describing things and how they work that I skimmed but in general it was so damn fascinating that I blasted through 800 pages in about four days. (It helps that I've been too sick to leave the house since Friday.) I think I like the Baroque Cycle better, but it's been so long I might have to re-read that and check to be sure.
Grade: A
Originally posted 2011
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