Mark R. (strato-reader) reviewed on + 49 more book reviews
Stephenson is too good a writer for anything he produces being junk and this isn't. But for a writer of such exuberance, wit and charm to write such a slogging, ponderous book such as this was very disappointing to me. In the pages where Jack Shaftoe shows up there are glimmmers of Neal's talents, but much of the rest struck me as his looking for validation by the scholarly crowd out there.
