SOJALS rating:

Good (3/5)

I first read this on the 13th January 2011 and most recently on the 1st February 2011

On the world of Arbre, Erasmus is a Decenarian in the Concent of Saunt Adhar. He's been there ten years. He envisions an unambitious future in which he'll make moderate progress in the Concent/ He enjoys rarified, ascetic and intellectual life just fine. Jesry, Lio, Arsibalt, Barb, Tulia, Ala, his teacher Orolo and Orolo's senpai Jad comprise his small circle of classmates and friends. There's a girl and he hopes something might work out there.

But none of this will last. Our young man will be out of the cloisters and into the real world soon enough. War and revolution are coming and destruction and death will roar down from the skies. He and his friends will become the strongest defenders of their world, standing firm to protect the thousands of years of cloistered learning within the walls of his school and all those schools across the globe. And some of those friends will die. Neal Stephenson certainly knows how to create complex and interesting worlds. He does it again with Anathem. It's a pretty good but rather a long read. It gets going after the first hundred or so pages. There's some real excitement. However it rather peters out through the final hundred pages. I wanted something more concrete or at least - bearing in mind the immensely detailed storyline already exposed - something with a little more background explanation.

What's it got? An inspired, quirky world; heart-wrenching moments; action and humour.