Seveneves

An epic tale describing the history of the human race after a sudden and unexplained event destroys the moon. Two thirds of the story revolves around a cast of characters that see through a last ditch effort to save humanity by sending those deemed worthy into space. The final third takes place five thousand years later as the spacefairing humans return to the terraformed planet surface.

There are moments from this book that are unforgettable, and the premise itself is really quite a good one. I really enjoyed both the beginning of the book, and as the white sky/hard rain began on the surface. These were some of the few moments that felt like they had a semblance of proper pacing, and a good division between character and story. I loved the depiction of the habitat ring that humanity lives on the future. Some of it's elements felt creative and interesting.

My fundamental disagreement with the book centers around its superb optimism. The people of earth, learning of the ever-shortening timetable of their lives, generally just go about their days, doing anything they can to help the chosen few get into space and survive. Oh sure, there's a little bit of political intrigue, and one nuclear attack, but for the most part humanity takes it in stride. I understand clearly the Stephenson has a different outlook on humanity than myself, but his viewpoint is so absurd that I could hardly take it serious. He had plenty of chances to show glimpses or hints as to the steadily devolving state of affairs down on the surface and then return to the story that he wanted to tell, but willing chose to paint things in the most rose-tinted way that he could. I simply had a hard time suspending my disbelief for his series of events, though I note that this is a personal taste issue more than anything.

My other major gripe focuses on the way that Stephenson writes. Stephenson insists on giving character backgrounds, technological descriptions, world-building vignettes, really anything and everything, in the form of long and dry blocks of exposition. At points it feels as though you are reading a textbook about something that should be very interesting, but you just can't help yourself from loosing focus. Stephenson never allows the reader to either think for themselves and put the pieces together, or to be told something in a realistic manner, either through dialogue or actions. Exposition dumps only. Furthermore, the book is just so dang long, for no real reason. I get that there's a serious hard SF bent to the first two thirds of the book, and that to accomplish that, the writer must go in to some level of detail as to how things work. I like hard SF, but at some point there has to be a difference between a novel and an instruction manual. So many pages of this book could be cut out without any real change to it's essence.

I'm surprised at how negative this review turned out to be, because like I said, there are some real moments that captivated me. They just happened to be surround by hundreds and hundreds of pages of stuff that I struggled to pay attention to and care about.