Customer Comments

Powered through this in a day. Which coincidentally is how long the action in the book takes place! This was written for geeks by geeks. It's laden with references to every Sci-fi thing you know. Sure plucked my heartstrings!

I haven't read a sharper attack on the petite bourgeoisie in a long, long time. I both liked and hated this book for its apt characterizations of people I fervently hope never to meet. I believe human beings are, at least in the aggregate, better than shallow petty busy bodies and self important bores that populate this novel. That said, this book is a wonderful example of literary schadenfreude. Kudos to Ms Rowling for coming out swinging after giving the world HP.

It's a shoot-um-up. The thing is I keep waiting for another Snow Crash or a world new to me like the Baroque Cycle but that's not in this book. What you have is a character driven spy novel that relies a little to hard on exotic locals to make the point that we are interconnected via computers. Of course the characters are very well defined but you'd expect that with over nine hundred pages to work with. But even a medium good book by a great author like Stephenson is still well worth the read.

It's a shoot-um-up. The thing is I keep waiting for another Snow Crash or a world new to me like the Baroque Cycle but that's not in this book. What you have is character driven spy novel that relies a little to hard on exotic locals to make the point that we are interconnected via computers. Of course the characters are very well defined but you'd expect that with over nine hundred pages to work with. But even a medium good book by a great author is still well worth the read.

I know that the subject matter is going to put a lot of people off but................... This is one of the most incredible pieces of writing I've ever come across. This book illuminates the bogeyman that awaits the fall of every civilization. I survived Katerina and have seen such things played out in our own country. The author manages to be wry, insightful and heartrendingly plainspoken at the same time. I'm going to be thinking about this for a long time. You can't ask more from a book.

For a lover of non fiction it doesn't get much better than this. Given the humble nature of the subject matter I was surprised by the depth of the research presented and the illuminating detail of the narrative. Anyone who reads history will appreciate how the author has linked together our mostly forgotten agricultural past to the rise of world wide market economies. I think I'll go bake a potato right now.