In some ways Crytonomicon is an absolutely stunning book. It is a seriously lengthy treatise about the importance of cryptography historically and in the present (well, 1999) day, focussing heavily on the impact it had on the outcomes both small and large during World War II but also on how it can be utilised in the modern day. Following Bobby Shaftoe; a Marine in World War II, Lawrence Waterhouse; a cryptographer in World War II and Randy Waterhouse; a somewhat unlucky tech start-up in 1999, the story passes from past to present and back again with the threads only loosely drawn together by the generational family. At least, that's how it seems.

You get everything from hard hitting war scenes, political manoeuvring, friends to enemies to allies, family squabbles, drama and romance here. You also get unbelievably long winded info dumps on cryptography - the history, importance, usage, background, and intricate details on how specific code breaking systems work. You get computer hacking and many other things, some of which I completely failed to understand like the pages dedicated to RIST. Some of it was fascinating, some of it tedious, all of it highly informative. However, Stephenson is also a master at turning a single sentence into pages and pages of text - even when it is completely unrequired. An example that astounded me was his description of a computer turning on. Never in my life have I read the better part of two pages dedicated to the single act of a computer turning on. Or the description of people in a room:

The room contains a few dozen living bodies, each one a big sack of guts and fluids so highly compressed that it will squirt for a few yards when pierced. Each one is built around an armature of 206 bones connected to each other by notoriously fault-prone joints that are given to obnoxious creaking, grinding and popping noises when they are in other than pristine condition. This structure is draped with throbbing steak, inflated with clenching air-sacks and pierced by a Gordian sewer filling with burbling acid and compressed gas and a squirt with vile enzymes and solvents produced by many dark, gamy nuggets of genetically programmed meat strung across its length.

And I'll point out, I've cut that particular passage very short. It keeps going. And you're left wondering... or pleading... 'WHY?!' It sometimes feels like what would happen if a toddler had the intelligence of a fifty year old genius. All the mathematical genius or stirring war scenes and then suddenly - oooooh, shiny! And off you go into the depths of whatever caught it's attention this time. Except without the blessed relief of the really short toddler attention span.

It's funny at points, striking at points, very educational at points and despite being so very hard to get through, I kept coming back to it time and time again. But it says a lot that it took me the better part of two weeks to get through this mega tome. Part of that is just down to it's length - 1000 odd pages will slow anyone down - but it's also down to the divergences into completely unnecessary aspects, sometimes pages or even chapters long. And as with all things, some of them really caught me - I got far too invested in the food and activity 'costs' for RPG's even if it had nothing to do with the plot - others, just didn't.

This is a book that would likely have been an easy five star read if some of the info dumps and random descriptive passages that turn into pages were removed... or at least significantly shortened. It is hands down, too long. There is a huge amount of content, but much of it reads like an encyclopaedia and other parts are completely random divergences that don't add a lot. There are exceptions - the scene with Randy's family dividing out the inheritance by mathematical manoeuvrings in a parking lot was completely unnecessary in many ways, but equally was both entertaining and developed the characters somewhat. Other sections don't even have that to explain them.

And the conclusion did admittedly let this down. The historical elements were fine; after all, there's not a lot Stephenson could do considering it's not an alternate history and he was following the course of the war. But the 'present day' finale felt like a huge let-down considering how long it had taken to get there!! Of all the things to rush - particularly after a 1000 page tome - the ending really shouldn't be it... and yet, it felt rushed, unexplained and frankly rather pointless.

I'm sticking with three stars though because despite the desperate need for a large scale trim, I did enjoy large sections of this book. It made me laugh at points, I grew truly fond of the characters - particularly Shaftoe - and I've certainly come away educated on some things I never thought I needed to know. I'm not sure I'd recommend it, unless you are in the market for a truly long and heavy read, but I don't regret putting the time in.

I am a big fan of Neal Stephenson. I previously gave Snow Crash, The Diamond Age and Anathem each 5 stars, and include the first two among my favorite science fiction stories. That is why, I was so disappointed that I didn't love this. I didn't even really like it.

There are parts of this novel that are brilliant, and the scope of it is impressive, but it just seemed to drag on for too long and in too many spots. Great writing, great characters and even a great story, but it was just too slow to keep me into it.

I still love Neal Stephenson, however, and am just going chalk this up to a bump in the road.

Δυσκολεύτηκα να βαθμολογήσω αυτό το βιβλίο, καθώς η ποιότητα ανεβοκατέβαινε σαν τρενάκι του λούναπάρκ. Πολλά κομμάτια του ήταν σκέτη ποίηση, και μάλιστα ποίηση για τα μαθηματικά, άλλα περιέγραφαν τους ανθρώπους και τις καταστάσεις με διορατικότητα και καυστικότητα. Άλλα πάλι ήταν αφόρητα κλισέ αποφθέγματα με ραστιστικό, σεξιστικό και σνομπ υπόβαθρο και υπεραπλουστευμένες θεωρίες. Το μεγαλύτερο μέρος ήταν απλά ένα ενδιαφέρον, αλλά μάλλον προβλέψιμο θρίλερ περιπέτειας. Το βαθμολόγησα κατά μέσο όρο και αξίζει να το διαβάσει κανείς ακόμη και μόνο για τις ιστορικές λεπτομέρειες. Επισήμανση: το βιβλίο το "άκουσα" ως audiobook όταν πήγαινα γυμναστήριο (γι' αυτό μου πήρε και σχεδόν δύο μήνες να το τελειώσω). Δεν ξέρω εάν το να το διαβάσει κάποιος με σταθερό ρυθμό θα προσέδιδε στην ανάγνωση καλύτερη συνέχεια και ολοκληρωμένη εμπειρία, ή εάν οι 1000+ σελίδες του θα καταντούσαν κουραστικές.

Rating this book was not a easy task. Parts of it were pure poetry, and poetry about mathematics at that, which I wouldn't have thought is easy to write, and poignant insights into the human condition. Other parts were pretty cring-worthy theatises of racisit, classist, sexist thinking, chock-full of cliches and over-simplified reasoning. About half was a solid, if occasionally humdrum, adventure-thriller, interesting and predictable. I gave it three stars on average and it's well worth a read. Note: I "heard" this as an audiobook every time I went to the jym. I cannot tell if reading it in a more regular way (for me it would take about a week) would add continuity to the reading experience, or if the 1000+ pages would get tiring.

A Nerd-porn Fiesta: hackers bravely battling through carpal tunnel syndrome; Amazonian bodied virgins falling in love with chubby computer programmers; strangely conflicted weeaboo overtones; more fapping or thinking about fapping than anyone wants to read about; phreaking; the Riemann Zeta function.

Entertaining enough, the analysis of the conflict between Ares and Hera being the highlight of the novel, but a low signal to noise ratio leads to significant data redundancy in a nine hundred page novel. Loses a star when you remember you could have read at least two Elena Ferrante using the same bandwith.