Book Review; Cryptonomicon

After only a month of sporadic reading, I've finally vanquished the beast! Jeez, what a long book. In paperback format, just north of a thousand pages in small print, filled to the brim with convoluted conspiracies and plots stretching across 50 some odd years. And when there wasn't action to be had, at least some high powered math could be discussed.

No, I'm not kidding.

I found that the chapters that centered on the Marine went by fast, and were easy to understand and fun to read. The chapters focused on the modern time cryptographer went by the second fastest, but could focus on corporate politics and other such intricacies and be a little slower to understand. The slowest chapters focused on the cryptographer in WWII, where tons of high math and statistics are thrown out, making it harder to read and completely understand. Several times I had to look up some math stuff just to sort it out in my own head before I kept trudging on. There were sections written in the perspective of a Japanese soldier, which I devoured simply because it was a novel perspective which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Despite my grumblings here, I liked that the narration changed not only in style, but also in vocabulary, and humor between the three main characters. That really made it feel like you were in those character's heads instead of an omniscient third party ghostly following them around. The Marine's sections were the parts that I found to be the funniest, which makes sense given my own personal sense of humor. The other parts were not devoid of humor, just that they had different perspectives on what exactly was funny.

This is not to say that Cryptonomicon is an expressly funny book. It's not written to tell jokes, but rather a very complex story. It does this well, I just wish Neal Stephenson could have laid off the math a little bit. It works, but it does kind of slow things down.

On my scale, Cryptonomicon is perhaps a 78 out of 100. It's a really good read, but perhaps I should have brushed up on my math skills before picking it up. I think one day I'll read again, after I've done so.