I wonder if he's learned how to write endings yet. Don't get me wrong, Snow Crash changed my life and I love Diamond Age and Seveneves but...
I enjoy the ending of Anathem more every time I read it.
Neal Stephenson – Announcing Polostan
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Re: Neal Stephenson – Announcing Polostan
#12I wonder if he's learned how to write endings yet. Don't get me wrong, Snow Crash changed my life and I love Diamond Age and Seveneves but...
I think the terrible endings are for the books that he has to meet deadlines on. Both Seveneves and Termination Shock suffered, in my opinion, from premature endings.
Re: Neal Stephenson – Announcing Polostan
#13The 'international espionage' trope seems a little well worn at this point.
Re: Neal Stephenson – Announcing Polostan
#14[deleted]
Re: Neal Stephenson – Announcing Polostan
#15The 'international espionage' trope seems a little well worn at this point.
> who re-christens her Aurora
Although there was probably a significant element of chance (how many naval ships were in St. Petersburg harbour at the time?), you have to hand it to the Bolsheviks: using a cruiser named "Dawn"* in latin, to signal a revolutionary attack, was a majorly literary flex.
* her greek epithet being rhododactylos, "red"-fingered, just layers on the allusions.
Re: Neal Stephenson – Announcing Polostan
#16I wonder if he's learned how to write endings yet. Don't get me wrong, Snow Crash changed my life and I love Diamond Age and Seveneves but...
The ending of Cryptonomicon is excellent!
Yes, it seemed like he had a definite ending decided for it. However books like the Diamond Age seemed more aimless.
Re: Neal Stephenson – Announcing Polostan
#17Hmmm. Interesting, but I prefer his sci-fi stuff. The Baroque Cycle was… weird. Full of intricate detail, but I derived relatively little satisfaction from reading it, and I’ll wait for proper reviews before reading this one.
Agreed. We need more mind-melting sci-fi books!
Re: Neal Stephenson – Announcing Polostan
#18No offense to Neal, but I'd love to read more of Snow Crash and Diamond Age style books.
Have you looked at Seveneves? I really enjoyed the first half, never finished the second half. Never really liked Diamond Age, but really liked Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon. I have Termination Shock queued up, will see how that goes. The description of this one didn't sound interesting to me.
No, just the synopsis. He lost me at Reamde to be honest.
Re: Neal Stephenson – Announcing Polostan
#19Hmmm. Interesting, but I prefer his sci-fi stuff. The Baroque Cycle was… weird. Full of intricate detail, but I derived relatively little satisfaction from reading it, and I’ll wait for proper reviews before reading this one.
The Baroque Cycle is what made me stop reading him. It actually pissed me off.
Re: Neal Stephenson – Announcing Polostan
#20I wonder if he's learned how to write endings yet. Don't get me wrong, Snow Crash changed my life and I love Diamond Age and Seveneves but...
I enjoy the ending of Anathem more every time I read it.
Anathem is the one book of his I've read that I thought had a really satisfying ending. It is also by far my favorite book of his. I wish he would revisit that universe. With Seveneves, it seemed to me that the quality of writing and pacing of the story changed somewhat abruptly near the end.