Book cover for Anathem

Some books are simply different. Neal Stephenson has written many of them. His Baroque Trilogy was astonishing, to say the least – but it was also one of the longer trilogies I have ever read. On my Palm T|X I think each of the three books numbered about 5,000 pages.

It’s been a while since I completed Stephenson’s entire back catalogue, and it’s no lie to say that I have been waiting for a new book for a while now. And here it is.

As happens so often to me, I discovered that his new book was due for launch in early September when I browsed Amazon a while back (Amazon is as close as I get to a real bookstore these days. What has happened to the world?)

I was overjoyed when Anathem was launched on Fictionwise almost simultaneously as the tree version. And I am happy to report that after having read about 10% of the book, the writer does not fail to deliver.

Stephenson has decided to set this new story in a different world. It’s in some way Earth-like with humans, and it’s history seems strangely parallell to our own. I don’t know what’s up with that yet, but it does remind me of Kim Stanley Robinson’s alternate world history in The Years of Salt and Rice (a brilliant book, by the way).

I’ll write a review of the book when I’m done. But if you like Stephenson’s Baroque trilogy you might like this one. It’s far from his cyberpunk stories though. Somehow I read it as a strange mix of sci-fi and fantasy, only the “fantasy” part isn’t what I usually consider Fantasy. Oh heck, just buy it.