First things first: if the strained metaphors and overtly purple prose in the beginning make you consider throwing the book away, keep going for a while. It gets better, though it doesn't disappear completely. Apparently this is one of those books that you hear about where the author spends way too much time polishing the first chapter, but the editor sees something in the writing and decides to jump ahead.

1992 is quite far in the past, and it's difficult to evaluate this book. Most of the things in it are kind of old hat nowadays, but apparently the book was ground-breaking in its time. For instance, Stephenson claims in the afterword having coined the word “avatar” for the virtual-world representation of a person. Still, the depicted breaking up of society, while probably standard at the time, doesn't seem all that realistic, especially the brief glimpses that we get of what happened to the public sector.

The story itself gave me a kind of a You-Fail-Linguistics-Forever vibe. Only a vibe because I'm not that up on how languages evolve, but Stephenson's take seems to be very Dan-Brownish: pick up a few random facts and invent some secret history out of that that lets you write a book. In fact, I was reminded of Dan Brown more than once, though Stephenson seems to be a bit better writer (the metaphors were painful, though).

Now we interrupt this journal entry for a massive infodump that will include what I had for breakfast today… Well, not quite, but this book really suffers from the infodumps, which are not at all subtle. I've heard that Stephenson does infodumps very well, and if that is the case, I don't ever want to read a book with badly-done infodumps. The infodumping Librarian character is also pretty unrealistic, as Stephenson doesn't seem to realize how his limitations would actually prevent him from doing any of the stuff he does, not just those he claims to be unable to do.

I'm not saying anything about the characters, because there isn't much to say. The main ones aren't perhaps completely one-dimensional, but they don't have much of a real personality either. Some of the throwaway stuff and minor characters would have been more interesting to read about than the geek fantasies, but, oh well.

But all in all, I did manage to read this, with some enthusiasm, and without feeling the need to throw it against a wall. It was somewhat entertaining, though nothing to write home about. And despite what everyone says about Stephenson not being able to write endings, I thought this book did have an actual ending (even if it was clearly cribbed from Die Hard II). I greatly preferred Zodiac, and am somewhat dreading Cryptonomicon, as I feel I can't take much more of Stephenson's “cleverness”

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Sending to erpax for winning in Monopoly.

Thanks a lot, VariC! Many thanks for the humorous card too. The book looks absolutely fascinating! Let’s see if I will be able to strengthen my self-discipline... On the other hand, if I would just read couple of pages at time, that wouldn’t matter so much... Anyway, many, many thanks!

This reminds me of the previous Monopoly books. I really have to journal them soon.

Edit:
*Tähän kyhään jotain journalia...*

Kirja lähtee halonhakkaajalle. Kiitokset kuriirille (ja lukuiloa myös, mikäli innostut myös lukemaan tämän)!

Kirja saapui perille. Kiitos kovasti!!!

Interesting description of one kind of future. Ideas were imaginative, but the technology goes so fast forward in our world, that this is not an easy genre. I had to check the writing year while I was reading, 'Hmmm, 1992, it doesn't seem so far away, but it has been huge changes after that indeed.' The mythology stuff didn't fascinate so much that it could have had.

Thanks VariC and Erpax for sharing this book!

Scifille löytyi uusi lukija tapaamisesta.
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Edit 19.10. Vastaus Sumakon kysymykseen. Nyt nimittäin muistan, että sinähän tämän tosiaankin kuriroit :) Kiitos!

This seemed interesting scifi and looked very familiar book. Lienekö itse kuriroinut tämän?!