Seveneves: A Novel

That pretty much sums it up. This book is basically two stories. The first part revolves around nerdy orbital dynamics descriptions with a sprinkle of politics and psychology. It makes sense and is mildly interesting but a bit much. The background research is, as usual for Neil Stephenson, quite impressive. The sorry elements is not the main part of this book. There are a few surprises in the beginning and end of each part. But most of the book is rather straight forward.

All-in-all Seveneves is an interesting series of what-ifs and an elaborate exploration of what these ifs could lead to.

It's a fairly slow paced presentation of a long series of events with a couple of sudden twists at the end of each part. This presents a sudden moment of "huh...?" at those points.

All of the positive raving for this book is true! All of the criticisms are also true! Stephenson is his own thing and he breaks all the rules of fiction. He breaks them in a couple different ways in this book. When it's great it's REALLY GREAT. When it's not so great, it kinda sucks. At different moments, I wanted to give this five stars. It's a hell of a book and I absolutely recommend it to any "hard" SF fans. Know that the exposition can really be a brick wall in the storytelling and it's not artfully done at all. But Stephenson has certainly earned himself a place on the hard-core SF shelf with this one (if he hadn't already).

LOVED this book. It's my first novel by Neal Stephenson, and I listened to 99% of it on audiobook, only turning to the hardcover for the epilogue. (Side note: the Audible recording is excellent.) The blend of hard science, space life, and human personalities and relationships was enthralling and intoxicating - it was one of those rare books that I wanted to start again as soon as I finished it.

The man needs to learn to edit his work better (or find a brave editor). The story dragged its feet in the middle. But I'm giving the book 5 stars anyway. The writing is not as tight as some of his better books, but the story is just as engaging, entertaining and thought-provoking.