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Comment by nissimk | Hacker News Reader

I liked it, but I am a big Stephenson fan. I skipped Anathem and the baroque cycle books, but Diamond Age is one of my favorite books and I also like Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon a lot.

Reamde was pretty good, and this is an interesting setup.

Edit: Anathem not Anathema (thanks __david__ and lmm)

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Yeah, just let me repeat what the other replies to you have said, Anathem is very much worth reading. It starts out kind of confined and a little slow. But it starts picking up steam and then goes off in a wonderful direction I never ever expected.

For me it's in his top three books along with Snow Crash and Diamond Age. It's also on a very short list of "books I will definitely read again at some point".

If the Baroque Cycle doesn't appeal up front, you're probably fine skipping it. I liked them, but I really had to push myself through large parts of each book. I kind of felt like they needed to be edited down a bit.

Yes! Someone should make a fan edit of the Baroque Cycle, or just a List of Best Bits. The cannon duel and most of the L'Emmerdeur parts would go in there.

I'm a huge Stephenson fan but tend to disagree with a number of others on Anathem. I found it to be a slog, that did pick up towards the end, but only by virtue of numerous deus-ex contrivances and somewhat ridiculous jumps of reasoning by the characters as they work through the central mystery.

Anathem is my favorite Stephenson book, and one of my favorites overall. Especially if you're a fan of his other work, I'd really recommend going back and checking it out.

I've read Anathem 4 times (just finished 4th read a couple weeks ago actually) and I find it satisfying with every single read. Funny thing is that I struggle with all his other books I've tried reading.

I've intentionally not read this teaser, but from he blurb I feel like I'm going to like Seveneves

> I skipped Anathema

You my friend, have missed out big time.

Reamde was very mediocre compared to the ones you skipped.

I enjoy the plot where multiple groups converge on a single location to get their hands on some key object. It's the same structure as two of my favorite movies: The Fifth Element and True Romance. When the groups are stereotypes as in True Romance, I find it even more entertaining. Reamde had all of that: bikers, anti government mountain people who are armed to the teeth and gangsters from multiple foreign countries :-)

I'll see if I can check out Anathem at some point, but Baroque is really too much of a commitment for me. I'm a slow reader.

Edit: Anathem not Anathema (thanks __david__ and lmm)

Anathem, not Anathema.

Books I've liked recently that have done that sort of thing: Rainbows End, or if you're willing to venture a little further in genre then Stardust (by a different Neil).

Rainbows End is amazing.

I think that's one of the things (about Reamde) that most bothered me about that novel. All sorts of amazing coincidences needed to happen or there wasn't a story. I actually found it easier to get into than some of his other books but was generally unsatisfied at the end.

Not his best novel, but it was a lot of fun and was well paced. It had a lot more action than most of his larger novels, which was kind of a nice departure.

I disagree, and since people seem to be piling on REAMDE, I just want to pipe up in defense of it. Having read most[1] of Stephenson's books, I think REAMDE is the best of them, or at least the second-best behind Cryptonomicon.

It's less ambitious than most of his work, sure. But it is a lot harder to create a gripping and memorable book set in the present day, written in a conventional style, and without the benefit of speculative future technologies.

With REAMDE he pulled it off, though.

I have read a lot of light thriller-type novels in my day (mostly bought at airports in the pre-Kindle era, admittedly), and they are usually pretty hard to care about. Not so with REAMDE, though.

[1] Anathem is in my Kindle queue, and I couldn't stay interested enough to get through the Baroque Cycle. Have read the rest, though.

I found the first half interesting. Then suddenly a random "terrorist" appeared and a completely different book appeared. The first half read like a Stephenson, the second half read like The Cobweb. All the interesting stuff disappeared and it went all wild west.

I liked Snow Crash and loved Diamond Age - but Cryptonomicon I couldn't be bothered to finish. Maybe having just read Singh's The Code Book highlighted how bad (subjectively) Cryptonomicon was.

My theory has been that after Diamond Age he got to famous and/or no longer had an editor that said: this is OK. Cut from 1500 pages down to 450 and this could be great.

Judging from this thread Anathem might be worth a look. And this excerpt doesn't look half-bad either.

I liked the Baroque Cycle books a lot. I like Anathema too, but it kind of lurched along; some of the philosophy portions were a bit dull.

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