No one writes like Neal Stephenson. Few people attempt stories as vast and as strange.
Neal Stephenson's new novel opens with a sentence I love dearly. I am shortly going to quote it. I would rather not do this. I would rather tell you nothing about the book except that it's flawed, fascinating and well worth reading and arguing about.
No one writes like Stephenson.
Few people attempt stories as vast and as strange. Even a lesser Stephenson novel repays attention, partly for its capacity to surprise; reading Seveneves with zero prior knowledge of its plot was a mind-bending experience, and one I recommend.
To back up this recommendation, some final pre-spoiler remarks. Like every other book of Stephenson's, this one uses formal language to position itself a small, strategic distance from its readers, like a speaker standing behind a lectern. It wields this frost-tinged language with uncommon precision, creating a picture of the world so detailed as to seem fantastical; the cost is that the story frequently approaches the threshold of Asperger's-style over-elaboration, a danger Stephenson offsets with a wit so deadpan that after a while even the driest descriptive passage starts to feel potentially hilarious.
If the above piques your curiosity even a little, stop reading now, avoid all other reviews and commentary, and go give the book a try. (Or perhaps try Reamde, Stephenson's propulsive and easy-to-love immediately previous novel, or the brilliant, toweringly ambitious Anathem, the one before that.) Spoilers now.
Seveneves' first sentence: "The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason."
