Authors: Neal Stephenson, Nicole Galland
Book Link

Reading a Neal Stephenson novel will test your intelligence.

His books are not known for being short romps with endless suspenseful sequences to keep you hooked. Instead, you are treated to the excruciating details of every minutia he can pack into his worlds.

Case in point: Anathem has an entire Wiki page dedicated to the math of the book.

However, if you’re willing to take the plunge and do a careful reading, you are rewarded with an internal locus of accomplishment. Not only has your brain sweat to the point of pure exhaustion, it feels satisfaction at crossing the threshold of those final pages where all is explained.

This particular book, which was co-authored with Nicole Galland, is much different.

It’s a much easier entry-point into Stephenson’s work, even though its sheer size may intimidate you at the onset. If you were to press me to provide a brief summary, I would have to concede it’s a fun romp that mixes magic and history, all while poking fun at government bureaucracy.

The book starts with a really interesting premise that gets you hooked, then wanders quite a bit until near the end. In essence: magic is possible, it disappeared from the world, an agency (D.O.D.O.) found a way to bring it back, the government wants to use it to send people back in time to influence events… it all goes wrong.

At times, the book gets silly, but if you made it to that point, you’ve committed anyway. There was a point when the silliness was so much I found myself laughing out loud. To that note, all I can tell you is a bunch of naked vikings raid a modern day Wal-Mart. If that sounds completely asinine, I should remind you the Big Lebowski was about a guy whose carpet gets urinated on and yet many people loved that movie to death.

Since this is a joint effort, you still see bursts of Stephenson’s methodical attention to detail where he’ll spend pages info-dumping on the reader. However, it gets lost to the multiple viewpoints this story is told through mixed with the barrage of characters you try to juggle in your head. None of that should detract from the incredible imagination this story has behind it.

It is refreshing to read something non-formulaic and predictable.

Overall, it’s still a fun book to read, but it didn’t hook me enough to immerse myself in. I was constantly picking at it, always finding something to enjoy, but not enough to keep me glued.

It wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but it still delivered.