For the first quarter of this book, I thought it was going into my desert-island-10. However, by the end I wanted it over SO BAD. Overall, I have to say I disliked it, but some of the details, images, characters and subplots are so compelling that I can't just dismiss it so easily. In fact, I think I'm madder about it than if had just been a crappy book.

Helprin kept breaking my heart by breaking his own rules of the world he created. He relied on coincidence instead of logical storytelling. He forced (rather than gently inserted) obvious political views into the storyline. He dropped delightful subplots for no apparent reason. He offered up a dissatisfying ending. He needed an strong-willed editor!

But some of his images and characters will live inside me for a long long time, and for those, it was worth it. Read it. You should. Sections of it are sublime, most of the rest is at least good if not great, and you can skim the crappy parts.

Divine.

Divine.

This is another life time favorite, written so differently from any other fantasy it will change your life when you read it. It changed mine.

I picked up Catch-22 to re-read and found myself annoyed, for the second time, by Yossarian only 50 pages in. So I quickly moved on to volume 2 of the Baroque Cycle, shelving Joseph Heller for another year (or two or seven).

Keep you posted on the awesomeness. Neal Stephenson is one clever dude.

I'm almost finished with this brick of a book. It's dense, fun, and incredibly well-written. Three main characters share plot-lines, moving us between Daniel Waterhouse, brilliant would-be scholar, politican, and contemporary of Isaac Newton; Jack Shaftoe, vagabond extraordinaire; and Eliza, the former slave, who keeps one foot planted in courtly intrigue and another in European finance. Fascinating and one helluva fun read.

Stephenson has an utterly unique way of composing a phrase and I've had to underline several passages along the way. Some of the best:

"Faith, a better mother than wife, who has a better son than a husband, encompasses a vast sweep of compromises with a pert nod of the head."

"Daniel experienced a faint echo of what it must be like, all the time, to be Isaac Newton: a permanent ongoing epiphany, an endless immersion in lurid radiance, a drowning in light, a ringing of cosmic harmonies in the ears."

"Aside from that, he did nothing noteworthy until much later in the day, when, all of a sudden, he murdered Jacques and Jean-Baptiste."

...so I finished it. Great book. Lots of fun. Ended somewhat abruptly but given that it is a three-monster-tome series, the ending made sense. I'm waiting and hoping that some of my favorite characters will reappear in the next installment.

Highly recommend. Fascinating, fun, and you learn interesting and totally random facts.

BLURB


REVIEW

I have a different edition and translation.