gsisk reviewed on 1/28/2010 + 191 more book reviews

In German this would be called a "Schinken" (ham), because it's a heavy and looong book. Get a book support, because your book-holding arm will get tired!

It takes about 300 pages to figure out how the different story lines are connected. It starts to become interesting after about 450 pages. The chapters are really short and jump between the stories so much that it's confusing for quite some time, especially since the characters in the different settings share the same names (family history). Currently I am about half-way through and was already tempted several times to simply put the book down and not finish it (something I very rarely do!). It's not that Stephenson is a bad writer - he's quite good, but the endless metaphors start to become tedious after a while, and the constant jumps between stories do not exactly contribute to this reader's enjoyment. I guess the author purposely is trying to confuse the reader by having the book's format conform to its subject matter. Btw, the Wikipedia entry "Cryptonomicon" comes in handy if you want to keep track of the characters and get an overview.

I did enjoy the descriptions of the cryptography concepts and of the more technical aspects (e.g Van Eck phreaking).

I finally gave up at around 730+ pages, right after Randy's girlfriend followed him home ... that was just too implausible/contrived for me.

All in all - a good book for someone interested in WWII stories, and who doesn't mind fractured story lines. Sometimes a bit boring, sometimes (too few times for me) very interesting - requires patience, a strong arm (for holding the book), and possibly a flowchart.

P.S.: The book "Quicksilver" seems to be using the same dynasties set a few centuries ago - which is something I very much dislike; I won't be reading it - unfortunately I had already ordered it, so I'll post it unread.

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