As always with Neal Stephenson books, this one is immensely difficult to describe. But this one is also incredibly difficult to rate, as it is really two distinct narratives, one wrapped within the other, with shifting emphasis throughout the book from the one to the other as the latter develops. Despite the latter occupying the majority of the book, I'll refer to it as the "secondary" narrative as it takes place within a construct of the "primary" narrative.
Effectively, this is a book dealing with death and the ability for technology to simulate consciousness to provide a simulacrum of a life after death. The primary narrative involves the world of earth and the figures central to the scanning, digitizing, and decoding of dead human forms to code digital consciousnesses that maintain traits of the original individual. Along the way in this primary narrative are lots of twists and turns, relating to our current socio-technological relationship (including large, and fascinating extrapolations of algorithmic content generation, fake news, human susceptibility/gullibility, stimulus echo chambers, religious evolution in techno-secular world, class division in America, the influence of access to information on education especially in an ever-present IT age, mythology, history, cryptography, etc.), and, per usual with Stephenson, does a spectacular job of not only creating something believably tangible, but encompassing it with such detail and richness as to feel real, and delivered enough through dialogue and characters' own learnings along with the reader as to make it easily digestible and feeling like a progressive journey.
The secondary narrative is the creation of universe of the digital world of the dead, and the experiences of those within it. This begins with the creation of the first sentient "being" (God metaphor) who shapes the universe through to a time period roughly equivalent to the Middle Ages but with, at the same time, loads of deviations from our true history. There are creation myths explored (and much of the book explores mythology - both in our real world and the fabricated "mythologies" that arise in this world of the dead) with allusions pervasive throughout (in both narratives) to our own conceptions of existence. While the second narrative begins with a truly philosophically provocative depiction of the first being "waking up" with no concept of time, existence, or self - a horrifying depiction of a potential hell - and then dedicates an immense number of pages to the evolution from sentient nothingness to established world, then to borrowed myths, then to alternate history, it finally concludes (at which point the primary narrative is largely abandoned) with a fantasy-novel-esque journey/quest. This journey is by no means bad - it was some of the most entertaining, page-turning content in the book - but rather that it lacked the depth, complexity, and provocation seen in the main story.
Aside from the immensely detailed construction of that world, and the depth of history provided, it was not a particularly special quest story - whereas the rest of this, and most other Stephenson writings, offer something more. What's more, so much of that historical context-setting seemed perhaps overly detailed in retrospect. Or perhaps not, because it added a lot of considerations regarding philosophy, society building, history, and religion/mythology - relevant to the reader's world and in the world of the secondary narrative. All of this did make for a more interesting world, but so many characters to which many, many pages were afforded came and went without much consequence (surely in part to demonstrate the amounts of time passed) or ultimately played little role. Others seemingly sprung up without much introduction to become pivotal.
At roughly 900 pages long, I found that it could have cut 100+ pages (especially from the Adam and Eve narrative which, beyond making readers question what it may have been like to be Adam and Eve, didn't offer much in my view) without much loss. And yet, at the same time, I wished the story would continue.
The climax and falling action happened so quickly, especially contrasted with how many pages and how many details were dedicated to their build-up. The conclusion did fit fairly well within the universe constructed, it's more just that I wanted more, given how much the story had been giving up to that point - it kind of fell flat by comparison. And it's also just that I wanted the story to keep going. The universes (for at that point, we briefly jump back to the primary narrative one last time, which is also quite far into the future) are so compelling and well made that I wanted to get to keep experiencing them. As always, Stephenson delivers something that is both weightily thought-provoking and extremely entertaining.
Despite its being almost 900 pages, and my exceptionally slow reading rate, I finished this in under 2 weeks, unable, for the most part, to put it down. The first 400 or so pages were and incredible mix of provocative, societally reflective, and entertaining. The next maybe 200-300 were a mix of dense but provocative, and fairly dull, but stage setting. The final 200-ish were mostly just entertaining (albeit fairly shallow and generic, lacking much of the depth that typically makes Stephenson stand out to me as an author). All in all, a dynamic and excellent book that borrows bits and pieces of its structure from Stephenson's Anathem (multiple dimensions and a quest) and Snow Crash (considerations for technology's ability to augment existence and how the human condition/human society may adapt and evolve in due course), while taking on altogether fresh subject matter, adding its own twists, and intermingling so many disparate concepts and knowledge subject areas - in a manner only Stephenson seems capable of doing - as to leave me struggling to describe everything the book explores and encompasses.
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"It has to suck this badly in order for everything to make sense"
(No spoilers in this review)That headline is a quote from a character in the book. It comes when the book starts to suck really badly - is it Stephenson being meta? I don't know. Here's what I do know though:The last 200+ pages of this novel are very bad, not just weak in the way that the last third of Stephenson novels usually are. I've read every Stephenson novel since Snow Crash except for the Baroque Cycle and Dodo, and would recommend all of them. Not this one.You know the premise of the novel already, and you know from other reviews that the digital afterlife riffs on Genesis, Paradise Lost, and Greek mythology - I didn't have a problem with any of that. For the most part, it was cleverly done, and occasionally quite moving and thought provoking. Part of what I liked about the first 75% of this book was its elegiac tone, similar to the first two thirds of Seveneves (probably the best of the Stephenson novels I've read), as befits its subject - death.The last 219 pages abandon the elegiac for the snarky, shift genres, and largely involve new characters you won't care about at all. And, worse: Stephenson, who cleverly alluded to the Bible earlier, ignores the perfect Biblical resolution (to avoid spoilers, I won't spell that out here, but if you search for "@dpinsen" and "*Spoiler Alert*" on Twitter, you'll find it).It's possible Stephenson is saving that better ending for a sequel, but I'm not sure I'd want to read a sequel to this one.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 26, 2019
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Top reviews from other countries
Michi Beck
Spinn ich oder spinnen die anderen?
Reviewed in Germany on January 18, 2021Mouse
Rollicking, philosophical and wonderfully weird.
Reviewed in Canada on August 8, 2019Ton van Bart
Niet zijn beste, wel de moeite waard
Reviewed in the Netherlands on June 30, 2019
