REAMDE - Not Exactly A Review

[luagha]

For some reason I didn't pick up REAMDE, by Neal Stephenson, immediately. Something suggested I hold off. I knew that it would wait for me. And it did. A week ago I saw it, possibly a remainder, on the rack outside a San Francisco bookstore by my work (Alexander Book Co.) for $4.99 in hardback. Now was the time

Comments

[banner]

As soon as anything vonngut like comes up, especially a karrass, I toss the book in the trash. Vonnegut started off as an okay writer, then descended into suck like piccaso. So many of his last books were really just crap and he even admitted it later. How they got published is beyond me.

[luagha]

I'm cleverly using the Vonnegut terms to kinda bag on the book, you see.

Other authors use karass like structures whether they want to or not, because of the structure of storytelling. You can only have so many characters that you introduce and keep track of over the story. It forms the Questing Band in any quest-like adventure story. Stephen King even makes it explicit in his Gunslinger series.

[lordjulius]

http://lordjulius.livejournal.com/2012/02/16/

After having had a year and a half to let it percolate, I now realize why REAMDE is the way it is. For his entire career Neal has been accused of writing books that have no ending.

This is him writing a slam-bang "THIS IS THE END OF THE NINTH SYMPHONY" ending, but he does it in such a way that it's a big fuck you to his critics, because it's enormous and stupidly unbelievable.

[luagha]

I don't quite get these accusations. I mean, take ANATHEM. It's so ending rich it has, what, three endings and the old guy uses his super math powers to pick the best one for everyone!

[luagha]

Now I, too, have had some more time for REAMDE to percolate