Anathem - a review

In a review, it's always a good thing to know where the reviewer is coming from.
With that in mind, a short history of my Neal Stephenson book history would be in order:

I've read most of the short stories, as well as the novels below.
Snow Crash - When I first read this one, I thought it was funny, original and reasonably well-written. However, a recent reading reveals that it hasn't aged well. Burbclaves, avatars and the like have become cyberpunk cliches.
The Diamond Age - I read, but it didn't really stick with me. I should really dig up a copy and give it another read.
In the weightier tomes, Cryptonomicon remains a favorite of mine. I'll dig it out and re-read it on a rainy weekend.
The Baroque Cycle. Hated it.
I managed about 100 pages of Quicksilver before tossing it across the room. The Confusion lasted slight longer, I think I manged about a quarter of it. The System of the World? About a chapter.

I mention this, because Anathem has much more in common with the later Stephenson than the older Stephenson. What you think of it will likely be influenced by what you thought of the Baroque Cycle.
So:

The Ugly:
Stephenson continues his trend of having characters expound on the key theses of the book for seemingly no reason at all.
In the Cryptonomicon, it was cryptography, The Baroque Cycle had monetary theory, and Anathem is about physics.

However, in Anathem he take this one step further by inventing characters simply as a foil for a dissertation.
So you'll get situations like this(changed to protect the plot):
Main Character walks down the street, runs into a pedestrian.
Main Character: "Hello, there, How are you?"
Random Pedestrian: "Not too bad, looks like rain"
MC: " It does indeed, do you know that clouds are water vapour"?
RP: "Really? Do tell"
<--Insert 2 1/2 page monologue about clouds.
RP: "That was interesting. Have a nice day"

This might be mildly irritating in a few hundred page book, but in a 900 page book, it pops up one too many times. Get stuck on a plot point? Invent a character to take care of it.

The Bad:
Much has been made of the lexicon invented for the fictional universe of Anathem.
To be honest, at first, it was awkward and intrusive. However, as the book went one, it became less of an annoyance.
A lot of the words used are either slightly modified historical terms, or the same modern word with slightly difference spelling and intent.
As I read the book, my mind tried to translate every one of the usages into modern English. However, I eventually adapted and learned to skim over the vocabulary.
The same happened with Stephenson's coining of new names for known problems.
Gardan's Steelyard for Occam's Razor or Adrakhonic Theorem for the Pythagorean Theorem. Once translated, the reading flowed fairly smoothly, but some references were quite jarring when dropped into the middle of a sentence.

The Good:
I didn't hate it.
One the problems I had with The Baroque Cycle was the sheer improbability of some of the situations. Galley Slaves rowing along discussing fiat money and the currency speculation? Sure, whatever you say, Neal.
However, the major problem was with the characters, I just didn't care about them. They existed solely to advance the history.

In Anathem, Stephenson fixes these problems. Sort of.
The characters are monks, so one might expect them to stand around and discuss philosphy or physics. In addition, they are more fully fleshed out in Anathem. They reacted like actual beings and not audio-animatronics. The "Hall of Presidents" effect is mostly absent.
When the characters do go off on tangents, effort seems to have been made to make them less relevant to the book. You can safely skim over them (as I began to) and not lose the focus of the book. I can imagine Anathem - The Abridged Addition, without too much trouble.

Anathem also had a story. A story buried very deeply and a story that clearly came second to the theses, but nonetheless, a story whose ending I wanted to read.

Anathem had flashes of the more character driven, less thesis focused stories Stephenson used to write. Honestly, I really wanted the Abridged Addition with most of the discourse stripped out. At about 500 pages, it would have been a much more enjoyable book.

As an addenum, this is the first book I've ever seen with a trailer.

Spoiler alert, don't watch the trailer if you don't want major plot points revealed!

-ajb