Enso's Reviews > Seveneves

As the joke has been going, if you enjoy orbital mechanics as a main character, you'll enjoy this novel. I was commenting to someone that the book could be 100 pages shorter if we dumped the super detailed description of orbital mechanics that occurs as an info-dump over and over again. Then I met someone who had gotten annoyed enough to begin counting pages when it happened and got to around 259 pages of it. *sigh*

Stephenson is the Stephen King of Science Fiction: only writes massive novels that no editor is up to the challenge of editing (and I *liked* Reamde!). There is a kernel of an excellent novel (or two) here but this is just a monstrosity that I finished out of spite.

The novel is divided into thirds:
1) Lead up to the destruction of Earth in a few years' time
2) The orbital antics following the destruction
3) 5000 years later with the re-terraforming of the Earth

The first third was a pretty good novel. The last third *could* have been a decent novel with a bit of work. The middle third was kind of shit. All of this with waaaaaaaay too much detail on how space mechanics work from an author who was a consultant at Jeff Bezos' private space venture in Seattle.

Needless to say, I was disappointed and question whether I'll be reading any more of Stephenson's tomes after all of this, and I've read every novel he's ever written.