I read "Cryptonomicon" and was fascinated by the level of detail and
how well researched it was. It was also an interesting story. I
thought I had found a really good author.
Therefore, I picked up the first two books of "The Baroque Cycle."
By the end of the first book, I was overloaded with details that just
didn't have much to do with the story, but were heavy on character
building.
It was also clear that we'd moved backwards in time and here were
these same characters acting on period stages, living on period sets
and using period props.
By the middle of the second book, I was bored and I just didn't care
about any of the characters anymore -- they were over defined and
didn't leave any room for my imagination when building the story in my
mind.
Other people prefer to have the story completely defined by the author
with few loose ends for their imagination.
Not understanding a book may be more a matter of a mismatch between
the book's author and you as one of his/her readers.
YMMV
Jim
On 30 Apr 2008 05:49:13 GMT, mvp@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Mike Van Pelt)
wrote:
>In article <877iehn5jh.fsf@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>Mark Jeffcoat <jeffcoat@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>Enoch Root is likely a little less jarring if you've read
>>Stephenson's previous novel, _Cryptonomicon_.
>
>Oh.
>
>Hmmm...
>
>I haven't read "The Baroque Cycle", but I have read and
>enjoyed "Cryptonomicon." Enoch Root was something of an odd
>character. I was thinking, in the 21st century parts of the
>story where he finally shows up that Root really should be
>quite a bit older than that. I don't recall catching on to
>any indication that he was an immortal, other than that.
>
>The other thing that bother me was that there's no way,
>even if your last name is "Root", that anyone but the
>system administrator is ever going to have an email address
>"root@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
" This was something of a plot point; the
>21st century protagnoist assumed he was the sysadmin, and
>was about as surprised as I was that he was not. But still.
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