Paperback, 872 pages
English language
Published May 16, 2016 by The Borough Press.
When a catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb, it triggers a feverish race against the inevitable. An ambitious plan is devised to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere...
Five thousand years later, the survivors' progeny embark on another audacious journey into the unknown, to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.
I hated less than I enjoyed. Could have been great if it were under half as long.
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).
Great world-building, great pacing in the first two acts but it stalls in the third act. He does manage to tie off most of the loose ends by the end but the ending still feels a little abrupt.
