The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell (Sparrow #1)

The Sparrow was the Deliberate Reader's book club book for June, for discussion in the Facebook group, and also the sci-fi selection for the year.  It also conveniently slotted into one of my reading challenge categories, for a book set on another planet.

The Sparrow is an interesting and immensely frustrating book.  It is interesting because it is as sci-fi book with a religious bend, and it involves first contacts with another intelligent species elsewhere in the galaxy--something that put me in mind of The Three-Body Problem, though that is a much "harder" sci-fi book than this.  It is immensely frustrating because all I really wanted was to slam these characters' heads, and the heads of their superiors, against a brick wall for being so incredibly stupid and ignorant of the Fermi Paradox.  I highly recommend reading Wait But Why's Fermi Paradox article, but ultimately it boils down to, in the words of Hank Green, "If they're out there, why don't we hear 'em talk?"  That is, if there is intelligent life out there--and statistically speaking, there should be--why do we not hear anything from other, extraterrestrial species?  There are a few different possible answers to this, but the one that always always always seems to come up in sci-fi is, "Because aliens are bad news," meaning that one of the reasons we don't hear from other intelligent species is that they know better than to be broadcasting stuff out into the void, because they know something we apparently don't, like there is something big and bad and willing to hurt us out there.  There are a few other explanations, too, of course, but obviously danger is a big driver of plot in sci-fi novels, so this is the one that comes up a lot.

Well, it turns out that you don't have to be big and bad and able to travel through space to hurt humans.  You just have to sing well enough to get them (us) to come to you (aliens; hi, aliens!).

So, as you have probably figured out by now, this book's central plot revolves around an act of astounding stupidity in which a group of humans, consisting of a Jesuit-led mission, set out to make contact with a newly-discovered intelligent species in the proximity of Alpha Centurai, despite not knowing anything about said other species other than that they exist.  Most of the book takes place significantly after this mission sets out, after the sole survivor (see, we knew it was a bad idea from the beginning) has returned to Earth, and his superiors are trying to figure out what has happened, particularly since the people who rescued him have also gone missing and are, presumably, dead.  The main character is Emilio Sandoz, a Jesuit priest and linguist who is the one to first suggest sending a Jesuit mission to this other planet (BAD EMILIO!) without, you know, anyone with any idea of what should actually be done weighing in.  As a result of the horrible events that take place on Rakhat during the mission, he suffers a crisis of faith, and the timeline of the book set after his return greatly focuses on him trying to answer that great question: if God exists and is both omnipotent and benevolent, then how is it possible that horrible things still happen?

This is a book that aims for spiritual rather than preachy, which was good.  Some of the relationships between the characters were intriguing; watching them grow and change provided the real reason to read this book, because the characters here are emotionally intelligent even if they are naive and lacking a serious dose of common sense.

This is a slow book.  Nothing happens for much of it, and then everything happens in just a handful of chapters.  When I was close to the end of the book, I couldn't believe that it was supposed to be wrapped up in under a hundred pages, because there was so clearly so much left to go.  Russell resolves this by just dumping it all in a narrative Emilio puts forth that takes a few pages; not exactly ideal.  While the dark subject matter could have made for a very heavy read if broken out separately, this particular way of relating events did nothing for the book's pace.

In other problems, the "sci" part of the "fi" is fairly soft, without a lot of technicalities to it, and with a lot of things that left me raising an eyebrow and going, "Hm..."  Sherwood Smith, an author whom I quite admire, noted in her review that the book overall lacks world building, a statement with which I would agree wholeheartedly in its applications to both her version of Earth and to Rakhat.  Much of the book is focused on other characters' fascination with Emilio's celibacy, and so it's not entirely surprising when it turns out the build-up of the entire book ends up being rape, much like in Outlander--but it also raises the question that, when you can write about literally anything in sci-fi, because you have the entire universe to play with, why turn back to rape?  Is there no way to have a crisis of faith without being raped?  Because, ultimately it's that which causes Emilio's breakdown--not any of the other horrible things to which he is witness.

Overall, a book that, while it has some interesting aspects attached to it, is immensely frustrating from conception to finish.  There is a second book that follows this, but I have no interest in reading it; from the book description, it promises to be nothing but more of the same.

2 stars out of 5.

Watership Down - Richard Adams

Watership Down is one of those children's books that I never read.  It's not that I disliked books about animals--in fact, I loved the Redwall books when I was younger, and the Narnia books have a good number of talking animals as well.  But for some reason, I thought this was a book about rabbits going to war.  And like in rabbit-y ways--like, basically World War II with rabbits.  I'm not entirely sure where I got this idea, but I think it might have been the title; it just sounds like some sort of distress call from a boat that's been struck by a torpedo: "SOS!  Watership down, I repeat, Watership down!  SOS!"

I finally got around to reading it because it was the Deliberate Reader book club selection for April in the Facebook group.  It also slotted nicely into my reading challenge category for a book that is a parable; while Adams did not intend the book to be a parable, saying that it was just a book about rabbits, it seems it's frequently read as a parable, and that's good enough for me.

The plot here is fairly basic.  Adams builds a society of rabbits, but keeps them in their natural habits and forms; they talk and act and think, but they're not necessarily anthropomorphized in the way that, say, Mickey Mouse is.  Within this society, some rabbits are gifted with seeing; in the warren of rabbits that starts the book, one of these seers if Fiver, the best friend of the main rabbit, Hazel.  Fiver predicts some unknown devastation for the warren, and on his warning, Hazel convinces some other rabbits to leave the warren with them.  They strike out into the countryside, seeking a place to build a new warren.  Along the way they encounter other rabbits who fled their warren, and encounter other rabbits not of their group.  And even when they establish a new home, they can't live in contentment, because without any females, they can't sustain a new colony.  And it's this struggle for survival, both immediately and in the long term, that drives the book.

Throughout the story, Hazel grows from an undersized, un-listened-to rabbit to the leader of the group, using logic instead of emotion and pushing on in the face of fear in order to take the new warren to safety.  We also get to see several different modes of warren society; the home warren, the one they encounter on the way, the one they establish on Watership Down, and Efrafa.  We also encounter other colorful characters, such as General Woundwort and the best character in the entire book, the bird Kehaar.  Human society is glimpsed through the rabbits' eyes and the story is bulked up by tales of the mythical rabbit who was the original rabbit leader, in the style of Br'er Rabbit and other trickster stories.

The writing was surprisingly engaging.  While it got off to a slow start, I soon found myself wrapped up in the story.  I didn't expect to enjoy it nearly as much as I did, but the different types of rabbit societies offered a wonderful study of contrasts, and seeing our core group of rabbits come together and learn to triumph as a cohesive group rather than a bunch of misfits was a great central propulsion.  Hazel was also definitely the proper choice for a central character.  The other two obvious choices would be Bigwig or Fiver, either of whom would have quickly become annoying as a main character--Bigwig because of his impulsivity, and Fiver because of his Timidity.  The other types of animals also held enough difference and interest to not make the book bland, which it could have easily become.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by my reading experience.  This is another one I can cross of my classics list, and I even recommended it to a few people who'd had similar misconceptions about the book.  A worthy read.

4 stars out of 5.

A Vision of Light - Judith Merkle Riley (Margaret of Ashbury #1)

I am a bad book club member.  I was so busy waiting to catch up on Ivan Ilych that I completely forgot I was supposed to read A Vision of Light for the beginning of March.  Oops.  And Vision, while not a doorstop, also isn't short, and it's not the fly-through-it type of book, either.

Set during the middle ages, the story follows Margaret of Ashbury, a young woman who hears a Voice telling her to write a book about her experiences.  She recruits Brother Gregory, a rather pretentious wanna-be monk, to do the actual writing for her as she is illiterate.  As Margaret's story unfurls through her telling to Brother Gregory, their relationship slowly evolves from contentious almost-enemies to something more closely resembling friendship with an air of debate about it.

This is a time period that we don't see a lot of historical fiction from, and particularly not a lot of stories featuring a female main character.  Fantasy in a medieval-inspired setting is fairly common, but not straight-up medieval fiction.

Overall, I liked this story.  It's somewhat slow and doesn't always seem to have a point.  It gets off to a particularly slow beginning, with Margaret's childhood in the village of Ashbury.  Some period remain more intriguing than others--while her time at the castle is good, her ramblings with the performers can get to be a little long-winded, for example.

Brother Gregory is an interesting character.  He wants to be a monk, despite coming from a noble house and having a fighting background.  He pursues enlightenment and spends his time reveling in qualities he doesn't actually possess, like humility.  Initially, it comes across as him being extremely pretentious and unlikable, particularly as he's very opposed to Margaret writing a book and only takes the job on because he's literally starving from poverty.  However, as the book goes on, we can see him exactly as Margaret does: as well-intentioned but slightly blind to his own character, and as a character of comedy rather than opposition or frustration.  It's this shifting of view that allows Gregory to come to be a friend and sparring partner rather than an outright antagonist.  Additionally, while Gregory can be stubborn and full of himself, he also starts to accede points to Margaret as the story progresses, even if he doesn't always acknowledge them aloud, and this allowance of understanding helps him develop as a sympathetic character as well.

There are a bevy of personable (and not so personable) supporting characters in this book.  Margaret's eventual mentor is one, her first husband another.  Most of them are Margaret's "supporters," who believe in her unusual abilities and help her through hard times, and her "opponents," who decry her as a witch and try to have her tried and executed for various reasons.

I was initially very skeptical about this book.  From the cover and the premise--woman hears the voice of God, really?--I did not think that I was going to like it.  However, I found myself pleasantly surprised.  While there are some problems with pacing, I found the characters well-composed and seeing them evolve was one of the charms of this book.  Its unusual setting and featuring of a female main character, and a midwife no less (one of the earliest forms of women in STEM) made for a strong story, and I'm interested in seeing where the next one picks up.

3.5 stars out of 5.

The Death of Ivan Ilych - Leo Tolstoy

The Death of Ivan Ilych isn't my first Tolstoy.  That would be War and Peace (the foreword to Ivan Ilych talks about how Tolstoy used W&P as a vehicle to discuss theories of history!!!) and I followed it up a year or two later with Anna Karenina.  But Ivan Ilych wouldn't have made it onto my reading list if not for it being a book club selection at The Deliberate Reader, because it is a novella, clocking in at around 75 pages depending on your edition and format.  Starting with the funeral of the eponymous Ivan Ilych, the story then jumps back to the beginning of his fall, first slow and then fast, in a series of short chapters.

I don't really like short stories because I typically don't find them to have enough substance for me.  There are some exceptions, of course; Neil Gaiman can write an amazing fantasy short story when the mood strikes him, and I've read some absolutely wonderful literary ones, as well.  Unfortunately for me, Ivan Ilych didn't fall into this wonderful character.  It is exactly what it purports to be: an account of Ilych's death.  Always wanting more and better, his greed drives him to spend beyond his means to no success, and it's in the process of this spending and remodeling of a new home that he quite literally falls, injuring himself in the process.  The injury initially seems minor, but drags him down towards a slow and painful death that's not only torturous to him, but to everyone around him, none of whom seem to particularly like him to begin with.  In the process of dying, Ilych reflects on his life--he feels that he has been wronged by dying, because he lived as he should have, though questions of things like love and meaning come to him as he lies in excruciating pain for weeks before passing away.

This is a contemplative story, and one that's probably not suited for everyone at every point in life.  Several of Ilych's acquaintances reflect on how he might die, but they couldn't possibly, and that's something that I think a lot of readers can empathize with.  After all, most of us don't spend a lot of time dwelling on our own mortality, and I suppose getting us to do so was part of Tolstoy's goal in writing this tale.  Ilych is not an interesting person; he's a mid-level bureaucrat in the justice system and his life is not exactly filled with adventure.  He wants to better himself and sees money as a way to do that.  He has family issues.  Most of us share these qualities, to some degree, as well as some rather unlikable ones that those close to us come to know.  In this way, though we might not like Ilych, I think we can probably understand where he's coming from, why he finds his demise so unfair, etc.  In this, I think Tolstoy did a very good job.

The problem?  This story isn't very interesting.  It's not really supposed to be, I guess--contemplative if definitely more its vein.  While this has its purpose, it doesn't make for a very riveting read.  This was a story I found myself wandering away from again and again, and it took me a surprising amount of time to get through less than a hundred pages.  It has its time and place, and I think it's actually quite good in that regard; it just didn't strike me at this time.

Based on the story's clear merit, I'm going to write it higher than I would on pure enjoyment.  I can see myself "enjoying" this more in a more melancholy or contemplative mood, and it's one I could potentially return to at some point, which isn't something I'd say about most tales of this length.

4 stars out of 5.

Ordinary Grace - William Kent Krueger

This was the November book for the Deliberate Reader online book club, but despite putting a hold on it well in advance (in September!) I didn't get it until mid-December, so I kind of missed out on the discussion.  Still, I wanted to read it so I was read up for the year.

This is a sort of mystery, but it's not a pavement-pounding one or one where people are getting shot or anything like that.  Instead, the main character is a twelve-year-old boy whose town is plagued by a series of deaths, some of which may or may not be murder, over the course of one summer.  Starting with the suspicious but possibly accidental death of a boy who was hit by a train, the deaths affect main character Frank and his town in different ways.  Because his father is a local minister and his father's friend works to dig graves in the town, Frank has a front-row seat to the various deaths and becomes ever-more entwined in them, particularly when one hits close to home.

This is a pretty simple mystery, and despite a few red herrings the author placed I had it figured out pretty early on.  There were a few aspects that I hadn't guessed, but none of them actually affected the outcome at all.  However, this only pertains to one death--despite Frank building up the summer of five deaths, only one of them is really relevant to the story, and another is connected but not part of the mystery.  The others were very tangential, one of them being mentioned in about one sentence at the end of the book, as if the author had forgotten he needed to include another death to get his five until that point, and then threw it in just to be done with it.

I did quite like the writing here, however; the atmosphere of a small town in the sixties is really nailed down, and all of the characters felt fleshed-out, developed, and relevant to the plot in their own ways.  Not all of them were likable, but all of them felt as if they belonged and were serving their own purposes, and had lives beyond just serving the plot, which is definitely not always the case in mysteries.  However, because this book was also a "portrait of a town" book in addition to a mystery, having all of the characters fit so well was very important to the book working as a whole.  The one thing I didn't always like was the pacing; while at some times I was intrigued and pulled along by the pace of events, at other times the flow seemed to slow to a crawl, making chunks of the book seem like they were never going to end.  Still, I liked it overall, and as it picked up speed towards the end it made quite a good airplane read.  It finishes up with a sort of "where are they now" epilogue, though, which I really hate as a literary device; the epilogue could have been structured differently or, honestly, left off entirely, and the ending probably would have been more solid.

3.5 stars out of 5.

The Gifts of Imperfection - Brene Brown

This is the selection for the Deliberate Reader Book Club on Facebook for 2018, with the focus on an easy-to-discuss nonfiction.  I've actually read one of Brown's books before (Daring Greatly) and so knew what to expect upon opening this one, which predates DG.  I was also pleasantly surprised to find out that it was short, since I was rushing to finish other books before the end of 2017 before I picked this one up.

Brown has spent her career researching shame, and has encountered a phenomenon of people she calls "the Wholehearted" in the process.  Basically, this book is kind of a self-help book on how to let go and relax into living what is, ultimately, a more fulfilling life.  It is not a checklist; anyone looking for one here will be disappointed.  Instead, she goes into the things that she's found common in people who are Wholehearted, and things that get in the way.  She punctuates the book with stories from her life and her research that illustrate her points.

Self-help books are very much not my genre of choice.  However, this wasn't an awful read.  While there are some things that Brown promotes that I don't really buy into (she talks about spirituality and says that it's not about religion, but she certainly deals with it like it is) but there are some good things to keep in mind, such as the importance of taking time to step back, play, rest, and not embracing a culture of scarcity--you know, never having enough time, sleep, beauty, etc.  Instead, try more to embrace what you have, and you'll be happier for it.  Brown herself admits to not liking everything she found in her research; our culture tells us that exhaustion is a sign of hard work and therefore being exhausted is a good thing.  However, it's not good for us as people.  Much of what Brown puts forward here is at odds with American culture and seems like it might be better in line with other places in the world--though of course, nowhere will hit everything she wants.  But beyond all, what's she's emphasizing, sometimes implicitly and sometimes explicitly, is creating and enforcing boundaries.  Letting people push us is how we end up unhappy so much of the time, so being able and willing to put up boundaries, and then stick to them, is vital to overall happiness.

This is a pretty readable book and Brown is an enjoyable author; she writes like it's an easy conversation, which was nice.  However, if you've read any of her other works, you'll probably find this more repetitive.  Daring Greatly focuses on parenting and leading, but she talks about all of the stuff from this book in one way or another, so if you're reading more than one of her books, be aware that you're going to re-tread some ground.  I think this one is probably more outright useful than DG because the things here can be applied to any point of life whereas DG is more focused on parenting and leading, things that I am not particularly interested in; of course, that might be just me.  Still, a good read for this time of year, with things to keep in mind for the year ahead.

3.5 stars out of 5.

Swear on This Life - Renee Carlino

Swear on This Life was the Deliberate Reader book club pick for December 2017, which made Thanksgiving weekend a perfect time to read it.  The book has pretty stellar reviews on Goodreads and a promising premise, so I can see why it was selected.  The story follows Emiline, who discovers that her childhood best friend and first love wrote a book about their experiences, and her supposed life after them, from her perspective, and it is a huge bestseller.  Emiline, who hasn't heard from Jase in more than twelve years, is furious, because he's profiting off her pain and suffering and he's not even getting it right.  But what to do?

So, this had the potential to be good.  But it really wasn't.  The problem is not the plot, or really the characters, but the writing itself.  The entire book, which is composed both of first-person snippets from Emi and of excerpts from the book Jase wrote, All the Roads Between, is flat and lifeless.  It's all telling and no showing.  "I couldn't believe he lied."  "I was so mad."  And so on.  There's a great lack of emotion here, which is somewhat astounding for a story that should have been absolutely bursting with it.  Emi and Jase's story is a hard one to read...except it's not, because there's no feeling embedded in all of the terrible things they went through.  Instead, this book reads like a dry recitation of the facts, instead of a tale that pulls heartstrings and evokes tears and rage and passion.

The nesting of the stories in a sort of Russian doll fashion was interesting, but it wasn't enough to carry a book that lacked any dimension.  I could understand Emi's pain and anger and longing, but it wasn't conveyed very well and I had to do a lot of pulling on my own emotions in order to make it all "click," something that a well-written book should do for me.  And while I think both Emi and Jase were promising characters and could have shone with a little more polish, the supporting characters were all pretty bland and flat, lacking any and all sense of dimension.  I absolutely could not believe that this was a book about a bestselling book because it was so poorly done.  And you know what?  Carlino is aware of this.  You know how we can tell that?  Because at one point Emi points out that Jase's book isn't well written and is just being lauded because it's a story about two kids in bad circumstances.  And that's exactly what the book as a whole is!  Are people really okay with that, or are the majority of readers seriously not catching on?

Overall, bland, not worth the hype, and dear lord I actually spent Thanksgiving weekend reading this.

2 stars out of 5.

Funny in Farsi - Firoozeh Dumas

A lighthearted memoir, Funny in Farsi was the Deliberate Reader Book Club title for October's month-long discussion.  The author, Firoozeh Dumas (her father specifically told her not to mention her maiden name in the book, and then wondered why she hadn't used it once it was published) first came to the United States when she was seven, when her father had a two-year work assignment for the Iranian oil industry in California.  After returning to Iran, her family later came back to the United States to liver permanently.

Despite the cover claim that this is "A memoir of growing up Iranian in America," I felt like much of the book wasn't really about Dumas so much as it was about her larger family, with her serving kind of as an observer in the background.  Each "chapter" is really more like a little vignette focusing on a different incident, and there's also a pretty big jump from when Dumas was a child to when she was adult, with only one real chapter on her adolescence--one minute she's trying to get her mother to bake American snacks for her elementary school, and the next she's getting married.  Many of the stories focus explicitly on Dumas' father, something that she admits in the afterword of the book.  Her parents are definitely the center of this narrative; despite having brothers and an extended family, most of the stories involve her parents in the central role, whether it's her mother's accent and learning of English consisting mainly of watching The Price is Right or her father wanting to compete on a bowling game show, "fixing" up the house on his own, or trying on her engagement ring when her boyfriend asked her father's permission to marry her.

Obviously, the humor here is in the clash of cultures that comprises Dumas' life.  While her family is eager to embrace much of American culture, they're still baffled by other parts of it--such as why Americans like turkey.  And then, once Dumas marries a Frenchman, yet another aspect of culture clash enters her life.  To some degree, Dumas presents herself as better than the others around her--better at adjusting, better at understanding, just better, which is a little self-centered, even more so than writing a memoir about your experiences.  (And she is correct that you don't need to have done something amazing to write a memoir about your life.)  Maybe it's that she's more pragmatic than other people in her life, maybe it's a skewed viewpoint; it's hard to say.  However, it's still an amusing read, though one that, like many memoirs, you probably need to take with a grain of salt.

Overall, this was an enjoyable read, but it's one that lacks a lot of depth.  Rather than really digging into any issue, light or heavy, Dumas instead skims over pretty much everything, keeping the focus away from herself.  I would have liked to see a little more depth here in some respect; depth doesn't mean that something has to be depressing, but it would have made the book seem a little more whole-hearted; as it was, it just felt a bit shallow.

3 stars out of 5.

Plainsong - Kent Haruf (Plainsong #1)

Plainsong was the September book for discussion in the Deliberate Reader Book Club.  After the train wreck that August's book, The Diamond Age: or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer was, I was glad to see that something was going to be a bit more, ah, tuned down.  The story of a small town in Colorado seemed like that would fit the bill.

This is definitely a character-driven book focusing on a handful of people in the town of Holt, Colorado.  The book also tries to be artsy, by doing one of those things where the author is apparently too good for dialogue punctuation marks.  I find that extremely irritating, and it almost made me put down the book; I only continued reading it because I wanted to be able to take part in the discussion in case anything interesting came up.

The main characters in Holt are Guthrie, his sons Ike and Bobby, and teenager Victoria.  Other characters are the McPheron brothers and Maggie, and occasionally Gutrhie's wife Ella.  Guthrie is a teacher and Ella is depressed and their marriage is falling apart, which clearly impacts their children.  Guthrie is also dealing with a troublesome student in his school.  Victoria, on the other hand, is pregnant from a boy she was seeing over the summer and who has since ditched her, and her mother throws her out of the house and casts her adrift on the town's mercies.

I greatly preferred Victoria's part of the book to any of the other characters.  Watching her adjust to her new life and slowly building a relationship with the McPheron brothers was a real example of character growth, as opposed to Guthrie who seemed to be just running in place.  Ike and Bobby didn't interest me much and their parts mostly seemed like filler, just to show that there were children involved to begin with.  I actually did like Ella; though she's not very present and doesn't seem like a good mother, I could empathize with what was her struggle with depression.  It wasn't that she didn't want to be a good wife or mother or functional human being in her own right, because she clearly did, but she just couldn't.  And she knew that remaining in Holt wasn't going to help her, so she had to leave.  I liked that Haruf didn't seem to shame her for this, but just portrayed it as it was.

One thing to keep in mind is that there's not much of a plot here to follow; this is evidently a series, though it's a strange book to be a series, and there might be some sort of large, overarching plot involved across the multiple books, but there's nothing really driving the story forward as an episodic story in this single volume.  This means that, while some of the people were enjoyable to read about, the book wasn't riveting.  I could put it down easily and sometimes found myself paging ahead to find out when Victoria's next section would begin.  And honestly, the cover here seems perfect for the book: dim and gray, much like Holt and the book itself, with Victoria's red purse and the McPherons' red cow being the only splashes of color in the whole book.

Overall, this was an enjoyable book for what it was, but I didn't find it to be anything extraordinary.  The lack of dialogue punctuation drove me to frustration--there's really no need for that.  I don't think I'll continue with the series, but it was fine for a book club book, and a welcome slowdown from last month's Book of Crazy.

3 stars out of 5.

The Diamond Age: or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer - Neal Stephenson

What on earth did I just read?  It was a sci-fi book for sure, but beyond that...what?  Okay, okay, I'll give it to you: I'm not the world's biggest sci-fi fan.  I don't typically seek out sci-fi books.  But I've read quite a few from various places along the spectrum that I quite liked.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure I can say that The Diamond Age was one of them.  Because here's the thing: there's not really a plot in this book until the last 20% and by that time I was so uninvested in the characters and world, having been boredly trucking along for the past 400 pages, that I didn't really care about what happened to them when the plot finally emerged.

The book starts with a character called Bud, who isn't at all important, so don't worry about him.  Ultimately the people you have to worry about are Hackworth, a nanotechnology guru, and Nell, a young girl who inadvertently ends up with one of Hackworth's creations, an intelligent "book" called The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer that adjusts to her and teaches her everything from reading to self-defense.  This could be some sort of bildungsroman, featuring Nell as the character coming of age, but it was really too scattered to be that in a convincing way, and then Stephenson tried to shoehorn in a plot about Feeds and Seeds and a revolution in what we know as China that just felt strange.

Ultimately, what this book felt like was that Stephenson wanted to build a cool world, but then he didn't know what to do about it.  Why are white people suddenly grouped together in a "phyle" named for Atlantis when everyone else gets their own group based on their old ethnicity or nationality?  What's up with all the body mods?  Why on earth did those nanites or whatever they're called have to be transmitted through bodily fluids?  Clearly they didn't have to be, we certainly saw enough that weren't, and Stephenson was apparently just figuring out a way to put some orgies and spontaneous combustion into his book.  (No, I am not kidding.)  Miranda was cool, and admirable, but what the heck was up with the Drummers?  That didn't make any sense at all.  This book read like some sort of bizarre fever dream, and one that probably would have been better off left in the world of sleep.  Like a dream, there were so many parts that could have been very intriguing, but it jumped from place to place on the most tenuous connection and just ended up feeling scattered and like Stephenson just made stuff up as he went along instead of thinking how it could all ultimately be connected--and then, when he needed a way to connect it, threw in a revolution, because hey, why not?

This was the August book for The Deliberate Reader's book club, and seems to have baffled many of the readers teeing it up, including the book club founder herself.  Indeed, the book does have remarkably high reviews given how absolutely schizoid it is; apparently a lot of people found the end worth the read, but there was nothing there that surprised me or made me think that the final events redeemed the rest of the book.

1.5 to 2 stars out of 5, for its potential and the actual stories about Princess Nell in the primer.  The main book was junk.