Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Neal Stephenson SEVENEVES

Was reading along getting into the storyline, even enjoying the hard science details up until the part where NS jumps ahead 5000 years into the future, leaving the first part of the novel abruptly and disconcertingly and unsatisfingly hanging. I put it down at page 638, with 861 total, though I had started skimming about a hundred pages earlier. Really too bad. So much time and thought obviously went into its making. Being a big NS fan, I was ultimately dissapointed.

Even though some resolution was implied, in that there are descendants of survivors, the Eves, making up the second part of the novel - there is no sense of continuity. It almost seems as if this were a 1000+ page novel and that publishers edited down the pastry shell to 638 but left out the creamy center. Or maybe NS just lost the momentum he needed to bring it all home.

Seven moons is about how long it will take to plod through to the end. (I had a peek through and skimmed the last chapter. There is a teaser about a character from the first part. Will we see the parallel storyline developed in a 2nd in a series of #? Will I even care?