Cryptonomicon [Mass Market Paperback]

I explain to my friends that this book is not written as science fiction. The tech/science mentioned is either today or near-today. What is science fiction is what it make you THINK.

The science is rock solid, one of the few authors who doesn't treat computers (my business) as a magic black box that does wonderful things for you. The main characters are pleasantly solid, yet excentrically unique. They are unfortunately the only characters with any depth.

My business partner is a huge fan of the author's, and has pushed me to read several of his books. This is the only one I have liked.

As Clancy made 250 pages of how to construct a nuclear bomb interesting, Stephenson makes you WANT to understand how cryptography works, and gives you increasingly complex explanations over the entire length of the book, fleshing out the explanations and definitions of many of the critical concepts.

The characters he creates leave you with the sense that they are true to life, but shown in a twisted way leading to many different levels of humor. I found myself laughing at a joke three times. Separate times, in three different places in the book, as the events in that place further illuminated the joke told several chapters back. There were surprises around every corner.

Highly recommended.

This novel is fun, huge, funny, rambling, witty, and sprawling. It is clever, engaging, and well-paced. It is full of quirky, eccentric, immensely likeable characters, crazy, interesting ideas, and amusing, often hilarious, looks at various situations including, but not limited to, mathematics, life, how to eat Cap'n Crunch properly, the purpose of beards, and well, just about anything else you can think of. Obviously, then, this book is not for everyone. Those who like tight, meticulously pared-down straightforward stories may not be able to get into this one.

For me, though, as you may have guessed from the title of the review, this book was an absolute joy to read. The books chapters cycled between four main characters, and every time I finished a chapter I found myself in an awkward position: I didn't want to go on, because I wanted to keep reading about the character I'd been following. However, by the end of the first paragraph of the next chapter, I'd be feeling the same way about the next character in the cycle. It was an odd feeling, and a tribute to the skill with which Stephenson created these characters that each of them was so completely engaging.

In addition to the main characters, the settings and situations were vivid and well-drawn. Despite this books immensity and its tendency to ramble at length about inanity, it never got boring, and always retained its charm. Stephenson provides us with a very amusing outlook on life.

However, this book is not without flaws, the two biggest of which have been noted in previous reviews:

1) Women. There are no really well-developed female characters. Most of the women have virtually no "screen time" at all, and the one who does have quite a bit of time is not fully realized as a character. It would have been very helpful to have gotten inside her head once in a while.

2) The ending. This book kind of just ends, without resolving properly. It feels like it just cuts off, and that was kind of unsatisfactory. Randy's story deserved at least another chapter or an epilogue of some sort to tie-up the plot. Alas, Stephenson, at the end, couldn't deliver.

So, as I've said, this book is delightfully readable, and if not for the sudden ending, would easily have garnered a 5/5 rating. I'm definitely looking forward to the next CRYPTONOMICON book (which, if I'm not mistaken, is intended to stand alone; it will not be a sequel, per se).

Even though this book is an astounding 1200+ pages, it is an engrossing read. Like Mitchner, the story weaves the lives of many generations together through a common theme. Except Mitchner never wrote about lives so exciting (Apologies to any Mitchner fans - but Hawaii was a little dull.)

There are many character threads and stories in the book, but the two main ones are the story of a WWII cryptographer (Clancy style), and the story of his Silicon Valley grandson's pursuit of an offshore data center and advanced cryptography (Gibson style). Both threads are thoroughly engrossing. The book paces perfectly, it never gets too frentic or too dull.

The character development is also done very well - Stevenson doesn't clutter the book with too many marginal characters besides his main ones and he makes most the characters very memorable. This leaves him lots of time to develop his main characters into complex and interesting people.

Stevenson's writing style is also very readable, yet not as flat as the standard supermarket fiction (or bad sci-fi for that matter). The different story threads are written in a different tone, and Stevenson uses his command of tone to provide even more character and plot development. For example, his savant WWI cryptographer thinks in mathmatical proofs, his modern-day cyberpunk in Tolkein-inspired metaphors.

If I had a complaint about this book (I don't have many) it is that the ending leaves a little to be desired. I won't give anything away, but my overall impression with the last 200 or so pages of the book was that Stevenson got tired and just started typing out some text to finish the thing up. It's not a complete breakdown, but compared to the rest of the book it is a weak showing.

Regardless, I still highly recommend this book to any cyberpunk fans, war story fans, or math geeks.