juliet sebestyen

Neal Stephenson has always been more about ideas...never a prose master.. But the second part of this book is so astonishingly badly written that I found myself wondering whether he had asked his Ethiopian friend,or his offspring, to do the chore for him...and the play of ideas,so stodgy and jejeune I could hardly believe this the author of snowcrash, anathem,etc. A major effort required to wade through pages of guff..an anti-stendhal. We love him but he needs to find a decent editor/proofreader. A sad fall indeed.