Fall, Or Dodge in Hell by Neal StephensonMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
I had high hopes for this next book of Neal Stephenson's. It takes the same world, some of the characters from Reamde but years later. (You don't need to have read the other book, but maybe you will feel more vested with the characters, possibly.) Anyway, the idea of having your brain scanned and uploaded to somewhere is interesting. It's a topic that computer scientists and others talk about a possibility for one day this to happen, so here is one writer's thoughts on what that may look like.
What it looked like was somewhat like the real world with some gaming tropes thrown in. Hopefully that didn't spoil it for you, but this is a long book and it comes up fairly early in the percentage-wise into the book.
In fact the book started out very strong. A good ways in and I thought to myself this is my favorite Stephenson book so far (this is the fourth, to give that statement some context). Then somewhere along the way the story gets lost into more detail and other aspects that honestly don't add to the overall book except page length. This seems to be quite a pattern for Stephenson, that he has to write these massive books, and probably 300 pages could be cut and not lose anything significant. So these books are marathons, and maybe that's Stephenson's way of things.
Anyway, I stuck with the book to see the payoff and I didn't find it. Maybe you will if you're a happier fan of Stephenson than me. I didn't like the gamification of the afterlife, at least the way it was portrayed. I also didn't like the whole creation myth recreated, that's about where it really stared it's downfall. Yes, there's much to gnash your teeth on for symbolism that's not that hidden, but it didn't do it for me. I'm sure it will get a good following of love from fans and some other folks.
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